


The Winter of Banked Fires

by Yahtzee



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Canada, Canadian Shack, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It, Flashback, Het, Multi, Reunions, Romance, Slash, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-16
Packaged: 2017-10-23 12:06:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 37
Words: 67,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier has returned from the dead -- but is lost within his own mind. Rogue has cast aside her own power and doesn't know where she fits in the world any longer. The production of synthetic Cure means mutantkind itself is newly at risk. And Magneto, turned human against his will, is in despair until the day he feels a familiar consciousness tugging at his own --</p><p>Set after X-3 (with much desperate fix-it applied), during XMFC, and every time in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erik

**Author's Note:**

> This fic basically takes what I liked from XMFC and what I liked from the X-trilogy, and where these canons conflicted, I felt free to ignore the discrepancies. Beast's characterization, however, mostly comes from the 1992 animated series, though I think it's believable that XMFC's Hank could evolve into that person.
> 
> Much thanks to my betas, Rheanna, Counteragent and ClaudiusLives.

Erik hates getting lost.

He never had been before last month, never once in his life. The difference between Earth’s magnetic north and south poles had always been as obvious to him as the difference between up and down. He was an adult before he understood how it was even possible for other people not to be able to find their way. (Before that, he’d thought pretending not to know where you were was some odd social affectation.)

Now he gets lost constantly.

He’s taken up residence in Boston, a city large enough to hide one aging man whose face was well known on the news – but only when he wore a helmet now cast aside as useless. However, Boston has winding side streets, no grid to speak of. Erik finds himself wandering from block to block, confused, back-tracking. He’s learning human tricks – memorizing directions, finding landmarks – but slowly. Today he’s sitting in a park at a chessboard as if inviting a game; really, Erik hopes to be left alone long enough to figure out his way back to the cheap “men’s hotel” where he currently rents a room by the week.

(Erik owns fortunes – in banks around the world he can no longer reach, in strongholds without keys he can no longer melt open.)

Originally he hated the Wolverine and Beast for his condition, but that hatred has dimmed. He first attempted to use the Cure against them, after all; he understands the need to strike back with equal force. Erik has been forced to live as the thing he feared most – as a human – and even in his darkest temper, he can appreciate the irony of it.

Charles would have had much to say on the subject.

“Hey, man.” It’s Juan Pablo, a skinny kid who often comes to hustle the newcomers at chess. He tried to hustle Erik once. Erik made ten dollars that day, an amount of money he can no longer scoff at. To Juan Pablo’s credit, he not only took it well but also has had the good sense to ask Erik for pointers. “You gonna show me the opening gambit you were talking about?”

“The variation on the Budapest,” Erik reminds him. “Not today, I think. But soon.”

Juan Pablo shrugs, takes a slurp from his McDonald’s cup. “That friend of yours coming to play sometime? The one who taught you that Owen’s Defense?”

He should just say it. _My friend died. He won’t be playing any more chess matches._ But Erik gave in to a terrible temptation the first time he spoke to Juan Pablo about Charles Xavier; he pretended Charles was still alive.

“How about this,” Erik says. “Next time we meet here, I’ll show you the variation on the Budapest and another of Charles’ best tricks. That one’s a surprise.”

“Cool.” With a wave, Juan Pablo lopes off.

It would not be precise to say that Erik _likes_ Juan Pablo – Erik will never be that open, and Juan Pablo’s habit of speaking with his mouth full is off-putting. But he does not hate the boy. Erik recognizes him as an individual, the first human being he’s allowed himself to acknowledge in many years.

What does that mean for him? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care enough to find out.

Erik is lost now in more ways than one. His pole stars have vanished in an inner sky that’s gone blank white. He can no longer measure himself against humanity. He can no longer weigh his decisions versus those Charles would make. Sometimes he looks back on the past decades and feels true horror; it seems impossible that he would do those things, make those choices. Other times, he thinks he didn’t do enough. He thinks the war is coming and he cannot fight. He imagines himself an old man trudging through mud toward wire gates that cannot be moved. They will close behind him, and lock, and he will be turned to ash.

Sometimes it seems to Erik that his entire life has been one long walk through that gate.

 _Charles, if only I could speak with you just once more. You wouldn’t mock me. You would listen. You’d give me advice, and it would either be wise and good, or so ridiculous that I’d know to do the exact opposite._

For a moment Erik imagines himself a young man again – fancying himself so jaded and hard, and yet still so new, so vulnerable to the world. He imagines sitting in the study at the great house on Graymalkin Lane, lying on the Persian carpet with his head pillowed on one arm, Charles next to him, with their bodies just inches from touching. Charles had been reading THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING aloud, and Erik had felt himself suspended between the beauty of the story and the unmistakable timber of Charles’ voice.

The sexual frustration had been killing him, the suspense of not knowing whether he should act, and at the time he’d thought he couldn’t bear another second of it – though really that was one of the most exquisite hours Erik would ever know –

Erik leans his head in one hand. He is so very tired.

His mind searches for Charles – a habit, one he’s never lost, not even after decades apart. They never lost the old connection. Even at the height of their enmity, Erik took comfort from being able to brush against the tethers that bound him to Charles. He was a touchstone … a compass point, not unlike his lost north.

Erik reaches his hand out toward the metal chess pieces. Once he could have made them dance. They used to have a set like this at the mansion, and Charles would joke that Erik was moving the pieces whenever he turned to pour them another glass of wine. It was his way of not admitting that Erik played better chess.

 _Charles_ , he thought. _If you were here, I’d let you win._

It seems to him that he hears/feels/smells/knows the echo of Charles’ presence, for just a moment. The illusion of happiness ghosts around him, almost a kind of serenity.

And that’s the moment the queen rocks on her square, the tiniest wobble.

The moment Erik knows he will find north again.


	2. Marie

Marie runs out of the dorms onto the school grounds. It’s Indian summer, hotter than it should be this late in the year, this far north. Tears blur her vision of the still-green trees. Blinded, she stumbles on the ground and falls hard to her knees in the dirt. She leans against a nearby tree trunk and covers her face with one hand.

 _Don’t cry,_ she tells herself as she sits there, trying to calm herself. _Don’t you dare cry._ But how can she help it?

“Hey,” says Logan. “You’re back.”

Marie looks up to see him standing near, leather jacket over T-shirt. As always, she feels a complicated mix of emotions at the sight of him: longing, confusion, vulnerability, trust. She says only, “Yeah. I’m back.”

“What’s wrong?” Logan crouches beside her, head cocked, as if he could track whatever hurt her by its scent and hunt it down. “Did it not work for you or something?”

Logan was the only one who knew she was going to take the Cure. He told her not to do it for some boy, to do it for herself, and thank God he did. “It worked,” she says.

To prove it, she slowly reaches out toward Logan; with him, she knows not to make any sudden moves. Logan stares at her hand, like he can’t even believe it, until she lays her fingers on his forearm. His skin is warm, almost startlingly hairy. At the touch, a lazy grin spreads across his face. Somehow that makes her want to cry more than ever.

“It worked,” Logan repeats. “So what’s with the long face?”

“Bobby – I guess he’s with Kitty now. Or he wants to be. He says he can’t be with me when he doesn’t know how he feels about her.” The fact that Bobby was trying to be considerate – to be _polite_ – somehow only makes it worse.

“Punk.” Logan’s face furrows into a snarl, but his eyes are gentle. “You gonna be okay?”

Marie nods, even though the tears have begun flow down her face. “It’s just – I waited so long, you know? I felt so lonely for years, and I thought as soon as I could touch somebody, the waiting would all be over. But I’m still alone.”

Logan looks profoundly uncomfortable, unsure what to do with a crying girl. He moves – to pull his arm away, she thinks – but instead he takes her hand. The simple comfort of contact, denied to Marie for so long, washes over her. She grips his fingers tighter until she lets go to wrap her arms around his neck.

Then she’s in Logan’s embrace, and it’s not about her crush on him, none of that. Marie is simply holding, and being held. She is crying in someone’s arms. She’d forgotten how much it helps.

Though Logan probably wishes he could escape, he hangs on to her and lets her cry it out. Marie is acutely aware of every place their skin touches: her forehead against his neck, his hand upon her bare arm. Merely breathing in another person’s scent is a gift she’d forgotten … even if Logan mostly smells like motor oil and cigars. She gulps in the smell of him, relishes the warmth of another body next to her own, and knows that at least she can do this. As long as that’s true, the Cure wasn’t for nothing.

When finally she’s calm, she leans back, blinking. Logan uses his thumb to wipe one of the last tears from her cheeks. “Better?” he says.

“I will be.” Although she still feels watery and hurt inside, Marie knows this is true.

“Listen to me. Okay? You’re not alone.”

Marie nods. Logan’s friendship – she had that before she got Cured, but it still matters. It matters a lot.

He studies her for a moment. “You staying here with us?”

She blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Then she feels like an idiot. Xavier’s School is a home for mutants; she is no longer one of them. Will the others even want her here, now? The one thing that bound them all together, made them the same – she undid that.

“Hey, don’t freak out,” Logan says. “If you want to stay, stay.”

“What if they all hate me?” she whispers.

“They’re not gonna hate you. Who could hate you?” It comes out like he thinks that would be totally impossible, which makes her smile a little.

“I’d rather stay here, if it’s okay. Out there – it’s weird, Logan. It used to be like human beings hated us –” Can she still say “us”? Well, she will. “—but now it’s like some huge tragedy happened. Like we’re, I don’t know, polio victims in iron lungs.” Marie did a report on that once for school. “Like there’s something wrong with us, even though we can do stuff like read minds and make lightning and, you know, fly. They act like the Cure being taken away was the worst thing ever.”

“Just glad you got it while the getting was good, since you wanted it.” Logan clearly isn’t too worried about what the rest of the world thinks of him; Marie thinks she really ought to try that sometime. “And yeah, it’s okay for you to stay here. Anybody says different, you send ‘em to me.”

That makes her grin despite herself. “I don’t want to just sit around taking up space. If you think there’s anything useful I could do at the school –”

Logan’s whiskery face twitches, not quite a smile. “We’ll think of something.” Then his expression clouds as he looks past her into the distance beyond her shoulder. “What the hell?”

She follows his gaze to see a dark-haired woman stumbling onto the grounds, loose-limbed, as though she were drunk. But that’s not right, Marie senses: Something is wrong with this woman. Something way worse than alcohol.

They both rise. Logan yells, “Hey! You lookin’ for someone?”

The woman turns to them; her head hangs at an odd angle, as if she were broken inside. She answers in a normal speaking voice, which at this distance Marie can just barely here: “Take me to Charles Xavier.”


	3. Logan

Logan doesn’t like the look of this.

They’re in the Professor’s office – just the office, now, but it still feels like the old man’s. But Storm has done a good job of taking charge. She stands there in front of the desk, arms crossed, staring at their new guest.

There’s something peculiar about the lady, damned weird if you ask him. Plus, she smells familiar. He can’t place the scent exactly – it’s changed, somehow, from the last time he breathed it in – but Logan suspects it means trouble.

“Charles Xavier,” the woman repeats. Her eyes aren’t focused on any one person or thing. The way she sits there limply in the chair reminds him of a broken doll. “I need to see Charles.”

Storm glances over at Logan, clearly wondering if he has a better suggestion to try than the truth. He doesn’t; he just shrugs. So Storm says, gently, “Professor Xavier is dead.”

“Dead?” The woman’s voice cracks. Logan could’ve sworn she couldn’t get any worse, but she starts crying, and yeah, it’s worse. This isn’t the kind of weeping Marie was doing outside, letting off steam like anybody else; this is like watching somebody let go of her last hope.

For a moment he thinks of Marie – seeing her cry makes him want to bust somebody’s head, and Bobby is now on Logan’s list – but he breathes in that woman’s scent again and frowns. Damn it, he knows her. Is she from the time before his memories begin? That can’t be right.

“He can’t be dead,” the woman chokes out between sobs. “He was talking to us, on the beach. He told me to go with them. I thought he’d be okay.”

Logan and Storm exchange glances; the situation isn’t getting any clearer. “Maybe we can help you,” Storm says, kneeling by the woman’s chair. “This is still a safe place for mutants and their allies. We’re not without resources.”

“No place is safe. No place is safe.” The woman pulls at her hair. “Magneto said we’d never be safe while they lived.”

Logan sniffs the air again, and it’s the scent plus the mention of Magneto’s name that does it. His eyes widen. “Mystique.”

She glances up at the mention of her name. Now he recognizes her – the bone structure that always lay beneath the blue. _Didn’t know her with her clothes on_ , he thinks.

But just when he’s about to flash his claws, Mystique says, “Where’s Charles?” She sounds like a lost child. “Did I kill him?”

“Not for lack of tryin’,” Logan retorts.

Storm rises and thumps Logan on the shoulder as she walks toward the doorway; he understands the order to follow. Mystique doesn’t even move, save to put one hand on the Professor’s desk, like she’s reminding herself it’s real.

Once they’re in the hallway, Logan mutters, “They must’ve hit her with the Cure.”

“They did worse than that, too.” Storm brushes a lock of silver-white hair from her forehead. “The bruises on her arms, on her neck – Logan, I think they tortured her.”

Logan’s been tortured. Captors love to figure out how much punishment his body can take, which happens to be infinite. Against his will, he feels a few seconds of real pity for Mystique. “Shit. Is that why she’s crazy?”

“Well, she’s unstable,” Storm says. “And human, now.”

“That makes her the humans’ problem.” His eyes narrow as he sees that prim look Storm sometimes gets on her face when he’s fucked up. “Right?”

“This school is a sanctuary.”

“For mutants.” Which is not exactly what he told Marie a few minutes ago, but this is Mystique they’re talking about.

Storm sighs. “The professor would have let her stay.”

“Yeah, well, the professor’s dead.”

“Do you want this place to change without him?”

Logan doesn’t like the sound of that, but he shoots back, “Do you think Mystique can be trusted? Wasn’t that long ago she helped kidnap Marie. Nearly killed her.” That’s not the kind of thing he can forgive.

“I remember, Logan. But Xavier would’ve given her a chance.”

“Xavier would’ve known whether or not that was a good idea. We don’t.”

The communicator at Storm’s belt chimes. She pulls it into her hand and frowns. “Moira MacTaggart?”

“Who’s that?”

“A human doctor who used to work with the professor. An ally,” Storm says as she puts the device to her ear. “Hello. Moira? What’s going on?”

Logan’s ears are sharp enough to pick up the tinny reply. “You’ve got to come to the hospital. It’s unbelievable – Ororo, it’s Charles. He’s alive.”


	4. Charles

Charles knows only a few things for certain.

He was dead, and is not. There are no words he can use to describe being dead – it’s outside of any language, any context or experience – and yet he knows what it was. In the same way he knows it is over.

This is his body, and it is not. He had formed pathways to this body long before his death, never thinking to travel the path himself. Charles had no plan; he made no choice. And yet he found his way here just the same.

Above all else he knows he is not alone.

“Moira,” he says again. She smiles down at him, face and spirit blurring in his confused mind. It seems to Charles that her chestnut hair and her pragmatic good humor are equally visible, that her reedy frame and her hope are equally a part of her soul. Then someone else comes close, a great cloud of blue. “Hank.”

“Merciful heavens.” That’s Hank’s voice, his bright mind turning the situation over and over. “The resemblance to Professor X as a younger man is uncanny, but this cannot be the same person.”

“It is.” Moira’s voice is distant, but Charles tries to hold onto it as a tether to consciousness. “Or I should say, it will be.”

“What do you mean?” That cautious spirit, both mourning and celebrating within her still, silvery form, can only be Ororo. Charles wants to say her name too, but he needs to swallow, and even that small movement seems to take all his strength. “It’s him or it isn’t.”

Moira explains. “This body belonged to a man who’d been declared brain dead. He had no remaining family. Charles and I were debating the ethics of transferring the consciousness of someone dying into him. I don’t know if we would’ve done it – we had no candidate in mind yet – but it seemed worth talking about.”

“That’s a slippery slope, Moira.” Hank’s disapproval washes past Charles, as transient as winds blowing past stone.

“Yes, yes, I realize that and so did he, but the point is that the connection was made. I believe that on some instinctual level, at the moment of death, Charles transferred himself into this body. And that body is even now being changed into a replica of Charles’ own. His psychic energies, I suppose.”

Moment of death. The memory swirls around him, present and past commingled. Winds of energy tear apart his flesh, while the darkness in Jean’s eyes rips his heart into ribbons.

He looks through the whirling debris and sees Erik lying there, stricken.

When Erik lifts his eyes to Charles’, the years of distance between them shrink to seconds. Nothing is left but regrets.

And then the void. And then … this.

The silver shine above coalesces into Ororo’s face. “Professor?” she says. “Do you know me?”

He calls her by the name she chose, to prove he remembers. “Storm.”

“My God,” she whispers.

“Now, listen here.” Hank was always like this, even as a boy; Charles remembers that much. “This could be some sort of a ruse. A duplicate created to fool us.”

“By whom, and why?” Moira demands. “For that matter, why create a duplicate of the younger Xavier, instead of the one we’d recognize more readily?”

“We’ll know him the same way he’d know one of us,” Ororo says. “Professor, can you touch our minds? Any of us? Just a touch. That’s all we need.”

This brain isn’t used to handling his powers yet; Charles has little grasp on his gift now. But he knows Ororo needs the truth, Hank too, and though he has no idea how long he was dead, he knows he has missed them all terribly.

So Charles tries to relax into it. He breathes in, breathes out. Shields he hadn’t known he was maintaining fall, and suddenly the clouds are gone. Everything is sharp – too sharp – and yet he remains open. He must.

Ororo. Hank. Moira. He brushes against each of their minds, unsure whether he is being too strong or not strong enough. Gasps of wonder touch Charles’ ears; at least he has done what he meant to do.

He tries then to pull those shields up again, but he can’t. It’s like trying to will spilled water back into a broken glass. There are so many minds around him, thousands, millions, billions …

… and something horrible is happening to them. To so many thousands of them.

The first time Charles makes a sound beyond a whisper, he screams.


	5. Hank

After Moira has sedated Professor X back into unconsciousness, Hank takes himself off to the hospital lounge to think.

It’s the professor himself, no doubt about that. Leave it to him to cheat even death itself! Hank wants to celebrate this incredible resurrection, but the memory of the Professor’s fur-raising scream casts shadows over his mood.

The hospital lounge is as sterile and glum as most of its kind. A television set blares unwatched in one corner. People in pairs huddle together, tense, tired and bored. Many eyes rake over his blue form as he takes his seat in a chair slightly too small for him; Hank can tell that some of them are nervous about his presence, but at least one perks up, perhaps recognizing him from television.

Secretary of Mutant Affairs, he’d been. U.N. Secretary, now. They’d made much of his new position, invited all the press to the swearing-in, even set him up with magazine and television interviews. Last week Hank had to rise at three in the morning to tape his appearance on “Good Morning America.”

Increasingly, however, Hank thinks he’s been kicked upstairs.

The real authority the U.S. government vests in the secretary to the United Nations is less than that given to a midlevel employee of the FDA. Hank isn’t going to meetings where anything gets decided; he’s going to receptions where people get their pictures taken with him. He’s being shown off.

 _Like a pet,_ he thinks.

Right now, the American government is making a show of tolerance toward mutants. The registration act is tied up in committee; thanks to a rider that adds on $800 million in shipbuilding subsidies, the act seems likely to wither and die from neglect. Merely seeing how many mutants were willing, even eager, to have their mutations “cured” has had a powerful effect on the public. Hatred has ebbed.

But instead of being replaced with respect, that hatred has been replaced with pity.

Xavier always taught them that they were not humanity’s superiors, but neither were they inferiors. The idea of being pitied rankles. And yet. This is progress of a kind, isn’t it? Sometimes pity can lead to sympathy – better yet, to empathy. Perhaps this moment, distasteful though it might be, is one they can use.

Then the television set screen changes into a graphic: BREAKING NEWS.

Hank’s ears swivel slightly toward the TV as he takes it in, and his eyes widen as the headline at the bottom of the screen is revealed – CHINESE ANNOUNCE MUTANT CURE BREAKTHROUGH.

“The Chinese government has announced that its scientists have managed to synthesize the compound known as ‘the Cure,’ which has the ability to indefinitely suppress the mutant gene and restore mutants to normal lives. Earlier this summer, thousands of mutants across the world were able to be healed – but when radical mutant leader Magneto destroyed the Worthington Laboratories compound on Alcatraz, it appeared that the chances for the rest of mutantkind had been destroyed with it. Now this announcement restores hope. But disturbing rumors about the Chinese government’s greater response to the mutant crisis abound. With more on this announcement, here’s – ”

Synthetic Cure. At this very moment, no doubt, thousands of vials are being loaded into crates destined for markets worldwide. The supply is now unlimited.

Across the hospital lounge, one of the waiting family members gives Hank an encouraging smile. She’s happy for him.

Pity turns out to have been the least of their problems.


	6. Raven

6.

She will call herself Raven.

Mystique was her powerful self. Mystique was her true self. Raven is the unwanted one, all she will ever be now.

Sometimes she remembers who the people surrounding her are – remembers battling Wolverine in the Liberty Island gift shop, remembers lightning bolts crackling all around storm. But their names go away as fast as they come. The one constant is that she knows they are Charles’ friends.

Earlier they said Charles was dead, and now they say he’s alive, so clearly she’s not the only one who’s confused.

Raven lies in bed in the room they’ve given her, though it is clearly not her room. Her room is on the second floor, just down the hall from Charles. She can look out at the pond from her window, and all her books are in a little shelf under the window seat.

(That was long ago, a lifetime ago, a life she’s repudiated and torn up and refused to look back on ever ever ever – )

(Magneto looking down at her, walking away, because she’s not a mutant any longer, she’s one of them and everybody knows they are worthless, they can’t be trusted – )

(She looks down at her hand and wills it to go back to itself, to be blue, but it won’t, so it’s true. She can’t be trusted anymore.)

Her fingers rake through her disheveled hair. The headaches have started again, and she doesn’t know if that’s from the shocks the humans gave her or all the crying she’s done. Things like cause and effect, now and later, are too jumbled to make any sense of now.

But maybe she would feel better in her own room.

Raven rises from the bed and wraps a robe around her; now that she is wearing foreign skin, she wants to keep it covered from everyone, especially from herself. Carefully she avoids the third step, which creaks, and tiptoes down the hallway of the second floor. Mommy doesn’t always remember her when Charles is asleep.

When she opens the door, though, her bedroom is all wrong, and there are strangers inside.

“If the rumors are true, and China really had mass executions of mutants today – the Professor might have felt that, and that could be why he slipped back into the coma. The psychic trauma would have been tremendous.”

“I don’t want us to become overly alarmed by rumors. If you believed everything about mutants that you read on the internet – ”

“Why would the Chinese be killin’ mutants when they can just change ‘em? That’s what I don’t – the hell is she doing in here?”

That last one is Wolverine, and now he is staring at Raven as though she is the one intruding.

“Why are you in my room?” she says.

The woman with the snow-white hair – Storm, it’s Storm, she knows this – Storm rises and speaks to her slowly. “This is a reading room. Your room is this way – ”

“This is my room!” Raven needs one thing she knows to be true. “This room! This one!”

“My God,” says the third one, the big blue one who is rising to his feet. “Raven.”

She stares at him, and then it comes to her. They have not laid eyes on one another in decades – that, she knows for sure. In a small voice, she whispers, “Beast?”

Beast steps closer to her, but he’s not talking to her anymore. “When did Raven get here? Why didn’t you tell me she’d come to the mansion?”

“We’ve been kinda distracted, what with people rising from the dead,” Wolverine snaps.

“You two knew each other. Of course.” Storm looks at Raven again, still kindly. “She’s not herself.”

“I see that.” Beast looks so worried. He used to look like that when he was playing with his chemicals, not sure how an experiment would turn out. Raven realizes she’s the experiment. “Would the two of you let me talk with her? Here?”

“Why here?” Wolverine says.

Beast’s voice is very gentle as he smiles at Raven. “Because she’s quite right. This was her room.”

Storm and Wolverine exchange a look, but they leave, shutting the door behind them. Raven goes to the window seat; there are still books piled on the shelves beneath, but not her books, not any longer. She sits down, suddenly aware that she has been awake a very long time. Days, perhaps.

Beast takes his place next to her. He’s larger than she remembered. The blue of his fur has deepened, and his features are farther from human than before. But his eyes are the same.

“What brought you here?” he asks. The others demanded to know; he just wants to hear. The difference is one of the few things Raven understands very clearly right now.

“I wanted to find Charles. Is he dead or isn’t he?”

“—that question should be simpler to answer than it is.” Beast sighs. “He’s with us, but very ill. Not awake. We have to let him rest, and see.”

That answer makes sense to her. Raven hugs herself as she stares out the window at the pond. “Does Erik still live here?”

“No, he doesn’t. Did you want to find him too?”

“Erik doesn’t want to find me. I’m human. He hates humans.”

“But you’re still you,” he says, as if he were sure of that. And it’s the one thing Raven’s never been sure of, not ever, not since the first time her skin flushed blue as a child. For a long time her mission sustained her – the one she shared with Erik – but that’s gone now, and she doesn’t know what’s left behind.

Very softly, Beast says, “Who hurt you, Raven? What did they do to you?”

“The police. FBI. Somebody. I don’t know who, but they had badges and guns.” Raven rakes her fingernails through her hair. “They taped wires to me, and the shocks – ”

The shocks made her transform, her body rippling from blue to beige to brown to scarlet, female to male, person to animal, naked to clothed. The screams coming out of her throat belonged to a hundred voices and yet she couldn’t make them not belong to her. Everything stopped making sense a long time before they put her in the truck, before Erik came to get her. Sometimes Raven thinks it doesn’t matter that they made her human there, because she’d already stopped being who she was.

“I am so sorry,” Beast says.

“Humans are evil.”

He hesitates. “People can be evil.”

Those aren’t the same thing, not exactly, but Raven can’t think about it right now. She wants to go to sleep, in her room. But there’s no bed in here. “Can I sleep on the couch?”

“Of course.”

But even here she doesn’t feel entirely safe. “Will you stay?”

His big paw settles over her shoulder. “Of course.”

And as she lies on the couch, she watches Beast in the nearest chair standing guard over her, and Raven doesn’t take her eyes off him until finally, finally, her head slumps down and she rests.


	7. Marie

Who is Marie?

She asks herself this question for the first time when she wakes up the morning after Professor X rises from the dead, a day when anything seems possible. Yes, she’s in her old room – same clothes, same face – but everything else has changed, or can change.

“What are you still doing here?” asks Volt, an obnoxious upperclassman with electric powers, but not the personality to match. “Don’t you have a mundane existence to lead somewhere else?”

“I’m still a part of this school,” Marie replies, though she’s still figuring out what that means.

Logan, true to his word, sets her up with stuff to do; she inherits one of Mr. Summers’ old jobs, cataloging and servicing most of the tech equipment. The fancier stuff has to be left to Forge, but Marie is more than capable of checking out the uniforms and communicators, and soon she’ll be ready to work with the vehicles, too. Maybe they’ll even teach her how to fly the Blackbird, since she made a start at it one time.

“Okay.” The cigar clamped in Logan’s teeth makes it look like he’s grinning as he looks at the motorcycle she’s been studying, but he’s not. “Tell me the four main components of the bike’s starter system – in order of how likely they are to break down on you.”

“The battery. The starter switch.” Motor or relay next? Marie tucks her white lock of hair behind one ear. “The starter relay and the starter motor.”

Anybody else would say “good job”; Logan’s version of this is to say nothing at all, just nod. By now that gesture means as much to her as the highest praise.

They’re in the garage, where she now spends a fair bit of her time; Logan’s not the only one who smells like motor oil now. To her surprise, she kind of likes being a grease monkey, wearing beat-up jeans and a tank top, working with her hands, and listening to the radio for hours on end. Logan likes old music from the ‘70s and ‘80s, but he’s let her choose the station a time or two. She actually caught him tapping his fingers against the Blackbird to some hip-hop the other day, not that she called him on it.

Though why couldn’t she tease him? Rogue couldn’t have – she was too shy – but Marie can be a little bolder, she decides.

Logan uses his cigar to gesture at the motorcycle. “Say the starter motor’s not working. What’s most likely to be the problem?”

“Most likely to be plain old dirt. But you could also check to see if the brushes or bushings are worn, or maybe the commutators.”

“The bushings?” He gives her a look.

Shit, should she have said bearings? Is it bearings instead? Marie considers this for a second before answering, “Yeah. The bushings.”

A real grin spreads across Logan’s face. “All right then, kid.”

Time to start teasing back. “Kid? Isn’t it time you dropped that?”

“I’m still older than you.”

“You’re older than Storm, too, but you don’t call her kid.” She pretends to examine the bike more carefully, fingers brushing along the chrome. “Maybe I should start calling you Gramps.”

“Gramps?” Logan gives her a look, and she can’t tell whether he’s amused or pissed off. Probably both.

So Marie puts on her most innocent face. “Or Paw Paw?”

“If so much as one ‘Paw’ comes outta your mouth – ” But Logan doesn’t finish the sentence, because she’s laughing too hard to listen.

So, Marie has real skills that are useful to the team. Marie stands up for herself. Marie can tease Logan – maybe even flirt a little.

But that doesn’t answer the whole question of who she is.

The other students always gave her a wide berth in the hallways, not because they were unfriendly or anything, just because it was the smart thing to do. Marie never minded, exactly – most of the time it was a relief to know she wouldn’t hurt anybody on accident. But she was looking forward to having people tap her on the shoulder, brush against her or just touch her like it was no big deal. She’s missed that so much. A hug, or a handshake, or even a freakin’ high five would make her day.

It doesn’t happen. The space between Marie and the other students shrinks physically, but has widened emotionally. The Cure changed more than her DNA, as far as they’re concerned. She has become an outsider in the only place she ever felt like she belonged.

The TV ads don’t help the situation either. They start up about two weeks after the big announcement of synthetic Cure, around about the time Professor X – still comatose – is brought back to the mansion in an ambulance. All the ads make the Cure sound so great. They always show the worst mutations possible – facial deformities, or animal claws and paws gunked up to look totally feral – and then have people walking out afterward as gorgeous as supermodels. As they stride into the sunshine, in slow motion, a banner reads HELP US HELP YOU. It’s as if every mutation is one of the bad ones, and as if taking that shot is supposed to fix everything in your life and make you sexy, too. As far as Marie can see, she’s the best-case scenario for the Cure … and she’s still got plenty of problems to deal with. The worst-case scenario looks a lot more like Mystique.

Mystique – hard to think of her as Raven Darkholme – has become the school ghost. She’s allowed to stay, mostly because Beast sticks up for her and keeps her out of the way, but Marie thinks being here isn’t helping her. Mystique’s eyes are unfocused, her posture hunched. Storm said Magneto abandoned her when she was made human. When Marie glances at Bobby – walking next to Kitty in the hallways, now, holding her hand like it’s no big deal – she thinks maybe she understands a little how that feels.

One night, though, when Marie tiptoes down to see if there’s any root beer left in the fridge, she peeks into the kitchen to see Bobby sitting alone at the counter. He looks tired. Depressed, even. So she says the first word she’s spoken to him since their breakup: “Hey.”

Bobby glances over at her, but he doesn’t look thrilled to see her. He doesn’t look ashamed of himself, either. He looks – the kindest word for it would be “irritated.”

It’s natural that they’d rub each other the wrong way for a while, she figures, so she tries to keep it casual. “You’re up late.”

“I got an email from my parents,” Bobby says. “They asked me to take the Cure.”

Back when Marie first took the Cure, she emailed her parents to let them know. It was the first time she’d reached out to them since she’d told them about the school, and the first time her mother had ever written back. Her heart had leaped when she’d seen the return email.

Momma had been so happy, saying _It’s all okay now; you can come home._ That was the first time Marie had been sure she couldn’t have come home before.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Bobby whirls on her. “You took it already. You’re human. Why don’t you go home?” His voice breaks on the word home, and tears glimmer in his eyes. “You can go home! You can see your family! Why wouldn’t you go? Why wouldn’t anyone – ”

He pushes away from the counter and rushes out of the kitchen. Marie thinks again of those cloying television ads. HELP US HELP YOU.

She’s not the only one wondering who she really is.


	8. Erik

Erik doesn’t sleep. He hardly eats. The small bank account he maintained under this alias is down to its last dollars; he won’t be able to go on more than another couple of months, at this rate.

He doesn’t care. Either he will regain his power or he will be lost. Everything will be lost.

Those stupid blithering television commercials were bad enough. But now the humans have brought God into it.

“God created man in his image!” cries Reverend Matthew Risman, leader of the Purity movement. He seems to be on every station now, his photo in every newspaper, usually with a cross silhouetted behind him “These mutations take humanity farther from God’s image, and thus farther from God’s will. But the Lord’s grace has provided a way for them to return to the fold. Satan claims these mutants at birth, marking them with his stains. Do they not have claws? Do some not have tails just like Lucifer? Now some of them refuse to take the Cure. They refuse to reflect the image of God. They choose the likeness of the devil!”

And such. Risman has gone from obscurity to celebrity within months; his tent revivals are drawing crowds. He draws more publicity than real followers, apparently – many news reports call him a firebrand, a radical. His faithful, the Purifiers, are considered to be on the fringe of society, closely akin to the militia groups of the 1990s. This marginalization doesn’t comfort Erik in the slightest. Quite the opposite: A radical on the fringes gives the average human being someone to compare himself to and feel self-satisfied. _I’m not prejudiced against mutants,_ they can think, _not like that Risman._ And so they feel no guilt as they consider voting for mandatory registration, or mandatory Cures.

Erik notes that Beast has been strangely quiet about the matter, but probably he’s being censored by the very government he chose to join. Oh, no doubt they’d let him say a few token words about mutant pride, but they won’t let him speak against Jesus. Political suicide.

Once, Charles would have spoken out, but now there is no one left to speak. No one who will be listened to, anyway: Erik knows he lost his public voice with his powers. The price of force – one he paid willingly, but it has proved dear.

The old cane chair furnished with the apartment creaks under Erik’s slight weight as he steadies himself for one more attempt. Atop the battered table is a roll of quarters, unwrapped and stacked. That’s as much money as Erik has to spend on food this week.

Extending one hand, he tries to smell the metal – to taste it – to roll the feel of it along his skin. And it’s not the numbness that encased him for weeks after being hit with the Cure: Erik can sense something there. Perhaps this is what it would be like for someone long-blinded to again glimpse one wavering shaft of light. The muscles in his hand tense as he urges the quarters to rise, to rotate, to spin around the room in a circle …

The roll of quarters jiggles, and a few coins slide off the top and clatter onto the table. One of them spins in the air for a half-second, maybe less, before falling alongside the rest.

Erik slumps forward. His disappointment is too great for grief; it erases feeling, leaves him numb.

If he had no powers and no hope of ever regaining them, he’d know what to do. He’d walk down to the river with stones in his pockets, and there he would drown. Drowning in a river called the Charles would be his final statement – both a bleak joke and a declaration of love, neither of which anyone would ever understand.

There he would die, and so he could never watch his race perish.

It’s different this time. Worse this time. Mutantkind is choosing to eradicate itself. They line up in front of clinics. They give cheerful interviews about returning to normal life. Their skin fades from indigo or scarlet to the usual and banal. They toss their shriveled wings into the trash bin along with their fingernail clippings. They claim not to miss their fangs.

The worst moment, for Erik, was when he saw Chimera on television, the latest to be made pure. Chimera, once among the most loyal of the Brotherhood, now willingly human.

“I tried to use my powers the best way I knew how,” she said in the interview. “I went after drug runners, people like that. But I still had to live with the knowledge that I would always be hated, be hunted It’s a lonelier feeling than most mutants want to admit.”

What made it hardest to bear hearing her words was hearing the echo of his own.

How often had he told the Brotherhood that they’d always be apart? That they would always be despised, that domination and supremacy were their only safety? He had given the Brotherhood no reason to believe in anything other than a desperate struggle to survive. When they were given another choice, a surprising number of them had taken it.

This is what’s left of his life’s work: Frightened mutants throwing away their birthrights, leaving only the thugs behind. Erik’s great mission lies in ruins, and now he has to second-guess nearly every choice he ever made.

If only he could restore his powers! But if his recovery never goes beyond this, it’s essentially meaningless. The Cure will still cripple his kind beyond their ability to fight back, if they even want to fight.

His hand shakes as he pushes back strands of gray hair. So tired.

Honing his talents took time, he reminds himself. Decades. He spent his entire youth making himself strong; precision came only in adulthood. Only after he began working with Charles Xavier.

 _My God, Charles, how I need you now._

Shopworn memories descend upon him, and he’s too exhausted and sad to push them back. Erik remembers walking through the streets of New York City, Charles at his side, their hats cocked at angles they considered rakish. He remembers tiptoeing through the school’s hallway late at night, lest any of the students realize where he was going and why, and feeling Charles’ eagerness all the while. He remembers a night they opened the windows while “Stardust” played on the hi-fi, and he and Charles made out like teenagers for almost an hour, until long after the needle had found the inner groove of the Nat King Cole LP and hissed in its course.

And he remembers how it all began –

 _The far edges of the grounds on a blustery, gray spring day, one of those that suggests winter is returning for an encore._

 _Charles’ plans for an airstrip right here in New Salem, gesturing at the place it will go while occasionally squinting up at the clouds overhead and the occasional cold splash of rain._

 _Running to the car before the rain could soak them both, cold air raw in Erik’s throat, damp earth soft beneath his feet._

 _The front seat, the low whirr of the heater._

 _“Haven’t you any gloves, Erik? You know you could borrow some of mine.”_

 _Charles slipping off his fine leather gloves, and Erik thinking he’d be given them as some sort of well-meaning present._

 _Charles instead taking Erik’s red, chapped hands in his, rubbing them, warming them._

 _“The thing about being a telepath – once people know, everyone assumes you understand everything. Hearing’s not the same as understanding.”_

 _Glancing away from the sight of Charles’ hands massaging his to see blue eyes, uncertain but gentle, so close to his own._

 _Erik’s dark eyes, always so wary and yet now alight with hope._

 _“And I’ve tried to tell myself – we’ve got to think of the children first, what we’re building for them, because we can’t endanger that for … personal concerns, but – my God, Erik – ”_

 _The realization that his futile, solitary passion is neither solitary nor futile. Raindrops spattering hard on the windshield. His pulse leaping as his fingers close around Charles’, as a touch becomes a caress, as they lean closer to one another._

 _Erik’s voice, softer than ever before, whispering only “Charles,” and the sound of it melting down his spine like hot wax from a candle’s flame._

 _“I can’t tell if you want me or not – because I want you so much and I can’t tell where I end and you begin – ”_

 _Pulling Charles to him. Opening Charles’ mouth with his own. The feel of stubble beneath his fingertips, Charles’ tongue between his lips, the desperate need to be closer, closer still, pushing Charles down on the front seat and kissing him until they were both dizzy._

 _“I want you. God, how I want you.”  
_

Erik’s eyes open wide.

Those are true memories of that afternoon. But the memories aren’t all his own.

The sight of his own face, the sound of his own voice –

It can’t be possible. He saw Charles die. The Dark Phoenix energy tore him to shreds while Erik could do no more than watch.

And yet.

Shakily he rises from the chair and walks to the table. The quarters are counted out by hand.

If he doesn’t eat much, he can still travel. Although the school is the obvious first stop, Erik senses that he may have to go farther than that. But he thinks he at least has a star to steer by.


	9. Logan

Six weeks after the announcement of the synthetic Cure, the crisis comes.

“What the hell is this crap?” Logan demands as he stands by Ororo’s side at the window.

“A protest,” she says. “The Purifiers. They say we’re encouraging the children to live in sin.”

Which now means, living as a mutant. There’s at least 300 Purifiers out there at the far gates, singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” like that has jack shit to do with anything.

“Guess you guys have dealt with this before,” he says, because it’s all he can think of.

“No.” Ororo’s voice sounds distant; her expression is forlorn. “The school’s real purpose was secret until recently, and since then there have been a handful of demonstrations in New Salem. At first when I saw them today, I thought they were getting bolder. Then I realized, it was the Professor. It had to be. People would have picketed the school as soon as they found out. But now I believe he always went in and changed their minds so they’d stay in town instead of harassing the children.”

The kids must be watching from the upstairs windows. They’re all getting those letters and emails from home now, like the one that made Marie cry for an hour and a half. Nobody’s left yet, but a lot of them are finding it hard to stay at the school – hard to stay who and what they are. What’s it doing to them, seeing this? The Purifiers look really fucking angry for people who claim to be acting out of love. THINK OF THE CHILDREN, one sign says. Like one single person in that crowd spent two minutes thinking about how any of the kids in this school feel when they see those signs right outside their windows.

Another sign reads: DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE?

“Wish Xavier would wake up again,” Logan says.

“That makes two of us.” Ororo pushes back her snowy hair. “In the meantime, I’m going to see how the Purifiers feel about protesting outside in a hailstorm.”

“Knock ‘em dead.” It’s a metaphor. More or less.

Before she can get started, though, a couple of the older kids stroll onto the grounds, clearly as ticked off as they are stupid. One of them – Dionne, who has telekinesis, magenta hair and the ears of a cat – yells back at the Purifiers. “Nobody wants you here!”

“Repent!” someone shouts – and then there’s the sound of a rifle shot.

Dionne is still falling as Logan shoves open the twin panels of the French window leaps outside. Above him he hears Ororo cry out in anger – she’s flying high, and the sky overhead is darkening fast. Already the protest has broken up as the Purifiers scatter; they weren’t prepared for actual violence.

 _Not most of ‘em,_ Logan thinks. _Just one. That’s all it took._

As lightning crashes down just behind the fleeing protestors, Logan reaches Dionne where she’s fallen. To his surprise and relief, there’s not much blood; she’s propped up on her forearms, even, obviously not badly hurt.

He only sees the dart protruding from her shoulder as her hair begins to change from magenta to black.

“No!” Dionne cries, reaching toward her ears. Her human ears. She reaches out with a hand; no telling what it is she’s trying to move with her mind, because she fails. She starts to sob. “They Cured me!”

Logan had been on the verge of going after them and shaking out just who fired that gun, once he was sure Dionne had survived. Now he remains still. If the Purifiers have the Cure, then they can undo the threat he represents in an instant.

And chasing them now won’t change the fact that more will come.

**

That night, there’s an emergency meeting in the Danger Room, the only space at the school large enough for the entire student body, faculty and gathered alumni. Logan finds himself standing next to Ororo and Hank, up front; the school is in some serious trouble if he counts as senior faculty.

How the hell did he get into this? Wasn’t that long ago Logan wasn’t even sure about remaining on Xavier’s team – now here he is helping to lead it. The responsibility feels like a leash around his neck, maybe a noose, until he sees Marie standing in the back of the crowded room. It’s a reminder of why this team matters: For Logan, it pretty much all boils down to the fact that Xavier gave Marie a home when nobody else would. Whatever led Xavier to do that – well, that’s the kind of lead Logan doesn’t mind following. For now, anyway.

“Everybody, listen to me,” Storm calls out; the crowd settles slightly. “After what happened to Dionne today, the school has received multiple requests from parents to send their children home. I’m afraid that, for students under the age of majority, we must comply.”

Another clamor – angry, afraid, unsure. Dionne herself insisted on going back to Beaumont within an hour of the attack; she didn’t even want to show her face in the corridors. Apparently being human isn’t as easy as it looks.

Logan finds himself again searching through the crowd for Marie; she’s standing in the back, clearly unsure whether she belongs here.

“However,” Ororo says, holding up one hand, “many of you are here without any input from your families. Other parents feel you are safer with other mutants than you would be at home. But we can’t remain here now that the school has become a target.”

“The cops can set up guards – ” someone says.

Hank looks solemn as he interjects, “The New Salem police department has refused any special security measures. No funding, they said. The truth, I suspect, is that they don’t see the problem. One person I spoke to even claimed Dionne’s difficulties had been ‘solved.’”

A hush falls. Normally, they don’t worry too much about protecting the school; even the one time they got jumped with all the adults besides Logan gone, the majority of the kids got away and took out plenty of soldiers in the process. But if the Purifiers now have the Cure, they can turn any mutant into a human instantly. Their mutant powers, their main defense, can’t be counted on any longer.

Ororo continues, “Obviously, if any of you don’t want to come along, if you’d rather return to your families – whether to take the Cure or not – that’s your business. We’ll help any of you who want to do that. But this school must find another, more secret location immediately.”

A roar of conversation, protests and plans and no clear center to any of it: It’s deafening. Logan wonders if it’s so loud, on a mental level, that it might awaken Xavier. He’d like to hear the Professor’s advice around now. Nobody wants to leave this place they know and love so well.

Beast steps to the center of the room, and his rich voice rings out above the crowd. “The fact is that the Cure is now available, cheap and limitless. The humans who sympathize with us now primarily want to take away our mutations for what they believe to be our own good. The humans who don’t sympathize want to use this Cure to remove us from existence. Today we saw the harm caused by extremists. That will be as nothing compared to the harm caused by the well-meaning and misguided. Defending this mansion is too short-sighted a goal.”

“We should reach out to more alumni we can trust for help,” Storm says. “And it’s important that we move quietly, without any fuss – if this becomes a public event, it becomes a hundred times harder. But with a new base of operations, we can keep the children safe while we decide how we respond to this Purifier threat. The school must come first.”

Beast adds, “No one should underestimate the gravity of the situation. Please, everyone, your decision to join us or not must be made with a full understanding of the risks.”

In the silence that follows, a student says, “Are we going to reach out to the Brotherhood about this? I mean – if we need help – maybe they do too.”

To Logan’s shock – and to judge by the ensuing hush, that of the entire room – Mystique is the one who answers. “Not now.” She tugs at a lock of her hair, too hard, as if she is contemplating pulling it out. “Erik would have listened. Pyro won’t.”

No, Pyro won’t listen. If that jerk’s in charge? He’s going to go after humanity no matter what; the Cure will only make him more reckless. Logan’s been around long enough to see guys go bad, and Pyro’s rotting from the inside out.

“Okay,” says Kitty, with resolve. She’s a spunky little thing; Logan likes her. Too bad she’s dating that punk. “We’re on our own. But where do we go?”

“There are options, most of them outside this country.” Beast begins ticking them off on his paws. “Switzerland requires registration by all mutants, but such registration is completely confidential and they’ve steadfastly refused mutant extradition on any grounds. Most Scandinavian nations also have registration but provide ample civil liberties protections. Argentina isn’t asking any questions right now. And Italy? Hah! The government’s collapsed four times merely debating the question.” Then he seems to remember this isn’t a merely theoretical discussion. “Logistically speaking, our first choice should be Canada.”

Canada has voted down mutant registration by a large margin, and the Purifier movement doesn’t have much traction there. It’s well known that mutants are starting to cross the border – sometimes with paperwork, sometimes not. R.D.s, they’re called: Registration dodgers. Some newsmagazines and websites claim that Canada is essentially trying to arm themselves with mutants, a kind of evolution-based arms race. Logan figures they can deal with that when it comes down to it. More troubling: vigilante parties of Purifier militias are starting to form at the borders. Mostly it’s yahoos with more beer than ammo, a few church groups there to do more singing than fighting, but the situation could get uglier.

But it’s a few hours’ drive away, and Logan figures they could get there easier than anyplace else.

To Logan’s surprise, Marie tentatively raises a hand. “I think I know where we ought to go.”

Everybody stares at her. A gangly kid in the back, the one named Volt, says, “You’re not even a mutant anymore! Why haven’t you gone home?”

“Hey. We’re all in this together,” Logan says, giving Volt a glare he’ll remember well into his next life. “So can it, okay? Marie, what were you saying?

She now looks shy again, but her voice remains steady. “We should go back to Alkali Lake.”

People murmur in disapproval, and Logan frowns. The government knows about that place, seeing as how they built it and all. Also, it was flooded under about a hundred feet of water. Plus that’s where Scott died, and Jean … the real Jean, not the Phoenix. He doesn’t think of the lake as a top vacation destination.

But Beast straightens up, whiskers twitching in excitement. “Of course! We ought to have thought of it immediately.” When everyone stares, he continues, “Somewhere at the bottom of that lake is a version of Cerebro. A version we might be able to fix, given time.”

He doesn’t have to add the rest. When the Professor recovers, he could use Cerebro to talk to all mutants, everywhere. That’s the single best thing that could happen for their side.

And if the Professor never wakes up – they’re no worse off around Alkali Lake than they would be anyplace else.

People are nodding, chatting, settling into agreement. Marie straightens slightly, proud of herself like she ought to be.

That’s his old stomping grounds, so Logan mulls it over for a second. “Got a thought,” he finally says. “An old mining town up around that way – couple hours’ drive from Alkali. Built up for an iron mine that went bust around 1975, the Claremont vein. Lotta houses up there standing around empty. They’re probably not in great shape, but they were still okay last time I was up there. Far away from everything else. We could do something with that.”

Beast fluffs up with satisfaction. “So we have a plan.”

They have the beginnings of one, anyway, and a smaller group is quickly chosen to figure out the details. Logan is chosen for the committee. It makes sense, kind of, since he knows the terrain, but shit, is this what he’s come to? Serving on committees? He’d rather be out there swinging his claws straight through some Purifier’s skull. But if the price is leaving the kids on their own – well, he’s stuck.

He deals with the uneasiness by asking to take a cigar break, and nobody seems to notice that he usually smokes anywhere he likes without asking first. Logan steps into a side corridor, one that isn’t used much. Turns out he’s not alone, but the person standing there is about the only one he’d want to see right now. “Heya, kid. Good idea you had in there.”

“I told you, stop callin’ me kid.” But Marie smiles at Logan as she says it. It’s a joke between them now. “And thanks.”

The light overhead is filtered through a metal grid, and lines of shadow criss-cross Marie’s face as he says, “Now you need to head home.”

“What?”

“Your parents asked you back, right? That’s where you ought to be. You have a normal life waiting for you. Maybe you ought to live it.”

Oh, she’s got a temper on her once she’s riled. “You of all people ought to know I didn’t take the Cure because I was afraid of what other people thought of me! I didn’t do it to go back to who I was before. I wanted to be somebody new. How do you not see that?”

“Hey, hey.” Logan holds his hands up. “I see it, okay? But this is gonna be dangerous. I don’t like the idea of you getting hurt.”

Her eyes take on that soft look that tells him he’s on dangerous ground – maybe he said too much, even though it was no more than the truth. Marie leans against the wall, hands behind her back. Quietly, she says, “Running away from you guys feels cowardly.”

“Not a cowardly bone in your body.” His eyes lock with hers as he steps slightly closer. “But this is a serious situation, and if you can be safe – you oughta be.”

“I’m not leaving,” she says. “I’m not a mutant anymore, but – I’m still one of you. If that means putting everything on the line, well, then, it does. I mean, you get it, Logan, right? You’re coming too, because you’re one of us.”

A leash, or a noose, tightening all the time – and Logan doesn’t even want to shake loose, not with Marie standing there looking at him like he’s actually worth something. He almost believes her. “Yeah. I get it.”


	10. Raven

Raven goes back to her room after the meeting. She’s taken it back; first she disassembled her bed and put it back together in the middle of the floor, then hunted through the attic for any of her old things. Now there’s a moth-eaten green afghan covering the desk that shouldn’t be there, and a yellowed Raggedy Ann nestled on the bookshelf. Nobody tries to come in here anymore, nobody except her – and Beast, but Beast is different.

So when she hears the rap on her door, Raven doesn’t mind saying, “Come in.”

“Good evening,” Beast says. He’s always so polite. He always was, even when they were teenagers. Alex and Armando would flirt outrageously with her, Sean and Angel would try to tell grosser jokes than the other – but Hank always asked nicely. Opened doors. Once, when they all walked out of an Elvis Presley movie to find a thunderstorm had begun, he held his jacket over her head in the rain. “I’ve hardly seen you today. How are you?”

“The same.” Alone. Frightened. Unsure of who or what she is any longer. But – eating again. The nightmares are less frequent. Nobody is going out of their way to be friendly, save for Beast, but nobody is going out of their way to be rude, either. “A little better, maybe.”

He sits in the chair nearest her makeshift bed. “I wanted to say – what you said at the meeting today was a valuable contribution.”

“Like anybody wouldn’t know not to trust Pyro.”

“Well, yes, but you were the one who understood that Pyro has probably taken over leadership of the Brotherhood. None of us would have guessed that. He’s so young.”

“He has fire.”

“… we did know his power, of course …”

“I’m not talking about his power.” Raven hugs herself as she leans back on her pillows. Recalling the Brotherhood is difficult for her, in every sense, but she finds she wants to answer correctly. “I mean, Pyro has energy. Drive. His hate is like a furnace.” How she remembers that warm glow. “People are drawn to him even when they don’t agree. These days, most people will agree.”

Beast mulls this over, concern knitting his deep blue brows together. “Do you have any idea where they are?”

“None. They’ll have gone someplace new. Nowhere Magneto or I ever saw.”

“I’d like to warn the authorities about him. But without specifics, it’s useless, isn’t it? Like those blithering ‘orange alerts’ at the airport. Something might happen, but there’s no saying when or where.” He leans back, resting his head against the wall, and Raven realizes he’s nearly as tired as she is. “That’s another reason to move quickly. If Pyro attacks and somehow vindicates the actions of the Purifiers – the last thing we need is to fight our way out.”

We, Beast says. He assumes she will be coming with them. Raven doesn’t know how she feels about that. Really she’d like to stay here at the house. She could put everything back how it used to be once there are no students in the way.

But another part of her – the deepest part, the adult part, the one who felt the pain and from whom she has been hiding – knows there’s no going back to the way things were.

So why not the X-Men? Why not Canada? At least Beast will be there.

His eyes still shut, he says, “If you think of anything else about Pyro that might be useful – anything at all – will you tell us?”

“I’ll tell you.”

Beast doesn’t catch the distinction. “Don’t think people haven’t noticed the help. There’s a place for you here, Raven. Personally I believe there always was.”

He’s so naïve – no. Innocent. In some ways, Hank remains as innocent as he was when they first met, when he wore a human’s face and blushed at the sight of her and was too shy even to steal a kiss. “We don’t need always. We just need now.”

“Nicely put.” Beast rubs at his temples.

“You’re tired,” she says. “Do you need to sleep?”

“Rather. But rest is hard to come by these days.”

“If it would help – I would watch over you. Like you did for me.”

He opens his eyes, and she sees that he wasn’t talking about that at all … but her mistake has touched him, deeply. “That’s kind of you.”

“So sleep.”

Beast pauses before replying, “Just a catnap. Don’t let me sleep past the hour.”

“Promise,” Raven says, and she means it. Beast may be the last person left to whom she would ever make a promise, however small.


	11. Charles

He is within himself and without himself.

That’s from a Beatles lyric, isn’t it? Charles loves the Beatles, has from the first moment he heard “Love Me Do.” His favorite is “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” because it reminds him of Erik. Favorite – that’s not the right word, because the song hurts to hear, and yet he never turns the song off, always wants to hear the words, always wants to think of Erik again.

“Professor?” That’s Ororo; he knows her voice. “Professor, we’re going to leave the school.”

And they must, Charles sees that through Ororo’s mind. Through the windows of her eyes he sees the protesters standing on the grounds, chanting close enough for the children to hear, one of them striking out at Dionne, whose fear jabs into him like a cold dart.

Then he’s off again, sifting through minds with no plan, no action, only the moment. This is Reverend Matthew Risman, speaking to cable news stations about how mutants are no part of God’s plan. Risman gilds his words with the misused word of the Lord, and yet Charles can see into his heart, knows that his hatred of mutants is purely calculated, a grab at ratings success – or maybe political power, who knows? It’s going so well –

Charles skirts through the minds of Risman’s followers – so many, so many more than there should be – and he sees mutants as pitiful freaks, mutants as demons, mutants as lepers, mutants as homosexuals, mutants as everything people think of as other, everything they refuse to accept, so many minds, so many explanations and so little understanding –

And at that moment, when he can take no more, his connection to the infinite breaks. His world shrinks from a globe to a pinpoint, to the most essential things: The warmth of this school, the beating of his own heart, and the memories he holds most dear.

Jean as a little girl.

Bashing around Oxford pubs with Raven on his arm.

Hank calling with the word of his appointment to the Cabinet, pride shining from his voice.

And Erik – no one moment. Every second with him, the good and the bad. Always Erik.

“Charles, we’re going to move you.” That’s Moira. He can’t remember if she’s still the young, headstrong woman he first met or the brilliant physician she becomes later. She is both and neither. “If we jostle you, I’m sorry. But it’s got to be done.”

 _Nervous as a schoolboy, fumbling with Erik’s belt as Erik’s hands pull at his shirt. Their open mouths eager for each other. Rain against the windowpanes._

 _“The children – ”_

 _“Gone for another hour yet.” Erik’s whisper against his throat, the heat of his breath sending shivers along his body. His hands running up the length of Charles’ back. “They went to an Elvis Presley movie.”_

 _“Long live the King.”_

 _Erik laughing, low rumble in his chest, Charles grinning just to know that he’s made Erik smile. There hasn’t been enough joy in Erik’s life, but now that can change, with them together the whole world can change –_

 _“I thought it was impossible to want you more.” Erik’s breath warm against his ear, Erik’s fingers pulling his shirt open to brush against his chest. “I was wrong.”_

 _Backing him against the wall, his tongue in Charles’ mouth, his hand groping for Charles’ cock through his trousers. Desire clenching Charles in its white-hot fist. The whole world melts away, there’s nothing but Erik, nothing but the way they begin to move together._

Straps across his chest. The beeping of a monitor. He recognizes that it keeps time with his heartbeat. Is he still alive, then? Charles is beginning to forget the difference between death and life.

The children are less frightened now; there is something to do, and any task, no matter how mundane or how dangerous, cuts through dread better than words of comfort or advice ever could. Through the children Charles loads the trucks. Locks the doors. Says goodbye to the one place in the world that has ever felt like home.

Then he is running through the corridors, a boy again, Raven at his heels. “Catch me if you can!”

Raven sitting apart from the others, trying to be far away, and yet she’s close, closer to him than she’s been in decades – Charles reaches for her –

What he finds is chaos. He spins away from her, away from his own body, into the vast unknowable dark. Once again Charles feels the fear and pain of the hunted and lost mutants across the globe, his untethered mind reaching further and deeper than he ever could, consciously, without Cerebro, and the anguish of it overwhelms him.

The monitor’s beeps become unsteady. Moira is swearing. Charles thinks he should be worried but he does not remember why.

As the sounds steady themselves again, he drifts away, seeking any anchor in this terrible storm.

Seeking Erik.

Erik is at a bus stop, huddling in a thin coat against the late-November wind. Dry leaves skitter across the sidewalk at his feet. He is both the younger man Charles first met and the older one he last saw at the moment of his death. The eyes are the same.

“Charles,” Erik whispers, lifting his head. “Is that you?”

Joyfully, Charles rushes into Erik, into the past, towing them both into a place he recognizes. Solid ground to stand on. They’re in bed together, just after that first time, breathing fast and gazing at each other in wonder.

 _“I didn’t mean to leave you in suspense.” Charles can’t help grinning as he runs one hand through his rain-dampened hair. “If I’d been certain you wanted me too, all this while – God, Erik, I wouldn’t have left it this long, not for the sake of the children, not for anything.”_

 _“Listen to me.” Erik’s hand curves around Charles’ face; his thumb strokes along Charles’ cheekbone, steady and reassuring. “This happened before.”_

 _“And it’s going to happen again. Soon.” Already his body is responding to Erik once more. Charles nestles closer to him, unwilling to be even a few inches away. “You’re right, you know. There are no authorities to check on us or take the kids away because we’re – and besides, we can keep it private. Like you said, whose business is it but ours?” He smiles, more shyly. “This is the best secret I’ve ever kept.”_

 _Erik kisses him, fast and almost too urgent. “Charles, concentrate. Can you tell me what’s happening to you now?”_

 _“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the fact that we’re together.”_

 _“It matters to me. You must try.”_

 _Charles tries. The room seems to waver, as if he is viewing it through the water running down the windowpanes. Walls are oddly transparent, though he’s not sure what he sees through them. Only Erik remains blessedly real; Charles can feel his touch, smell his skin._

 _He whispers, “I’m lost. Every time I think I’ve found the path back to myself, it turns out I’m more lost than before. I can’t tell which mind is my own, sometimes.” He leans his head against Erik’s chest, needing that solidity. “They’re taking me away. I don’t know where. I should be there to help them – I want to be, I’m trying to be – but there’s no way out of the maze. You’re the only real thing here.”_

 _“Charles, I’m coming to find you. Do you understand?” Erik embraces him, and they twine their limbs together, chest against chest so that their heartbeats collide, as if they will physically prevent anyone from tearing them apart. “No matter what, I will find you.”_

 _“Don’t leave me – ”_

He’s looking up at Erik, but Erik is older now, wearing a helmet that separates their minds. Cerebro circles them both, but the wrong Cerebro, a broken and evil one designed to turn Charles against everything he values most. And Erik is helping it.

“Kill them all,” Erik says. Every human being on earth, he means, and Charles can’t stop himself from trying to comply. Something at the core of him cries out in the pain of knowing the wrong he is about to do – and the pain of knowing that Erik has finally, utterly betrayed him.

Then all those human minds rush in, gasping for breath, shrieking in agony, and the agony claims Charles, swirling around him.

He must save Erik from himself. He leaps from the ship into the frigid ocean. But Erik isn’t down there, nobody’s down there, and Charles is drowning alone in the dark.


	12. Logan

The sky pelts down what weathermen like to call “wintry mix” – sleet, snow and rain altogether. In Japanese, it’s _yukimajire_ ; in Russian, _slyakot._ Although Logan doesn’t remember where or when he learned those languages, the words well up, sneaking behind the wall around his oldest memories. He decides to hear what an expert would call it.

“Sludge,” Ororo mutters from the place where she’s huddled down in the back of the rig of the truck. “I call this sludge.”

“Sludge? Huh. Figured you’d be – I don’t know, more precise about it.” He takes a drag on his cigar as he steps lightly on the gas and the tractor-trailer moves forward in the line at the Canadian border.

“Language is sloppy,” Ororo says. She sounds pissed off. “Weather is precise. Human words don’t fit.”

“Sorry if it’s a sensitive subject,” Logan says, though the idea strikes him as kind of hilarious. Ororo freaking out about how nobody knows how to describe the weather: He’ll have to tell Marie about that later.

“I don’t mean to be rude.” She sighs as she tries to get comfortable under the blanket in that scrap of a back seat. Small spaces are tough for her, he knows, but Ororo hasn’t complained. “A mix of precipitation can be difficult to create. Extremes are easy. This mess, neither one thing nor another – it takes concentration.”

Despite that, Logan sees, she keeps it coming down, thick and annoying, the better to make the border guards hurry and wave them through.

Their convoy consists of seven 18-wheelers, fully loaded. Six of them are already through – with the limited gear they’re carrying (packaged as large appliances) and the older students who couldn’t make the flight in the Blackbird along with the Professor (behind the appliances).

Not all the students came; in the end, they lost about a dozen. Those families wanted their kids home, at and least ten of them specifically mentioned the Cure. A couple of the kids wanted to just run away with them anyhow, but Ororo didn’t allow it. That stuck in Logan’s craw; aren’t they supposed to be able to choose what they want? She said they couldn’t stoop to kidnapping, not least because it would turn them into fugitives the U.S. government would prioritize hunting down. Now those children are being remade into something they were never meant to be: humans.

His pulse quickens, not only from anger at the thought of what’s happening to the kids, but also because they’re getting closer to the moment when the border guards might decide there’s something interesting in his truck.

If they look in the back, past a couple of refrigerators Colossus tucked back there for show, they’re going to find a couple of sheepish mutants and a whole lot of weaponry that can’t be easily explained away. Once again, Logan wishes Xavier were with them, awake and back to himself – no chance of getting past a direct inspection without a little mind-whammy, and none of the people with them have even a shadow of psychic ability.

Finally, it’s their turn at the crossing gate. Logan adjusts his trucker hat as he pulls up, puts it in park, and casually flips over the counterfeit commercial driver’s license and cargo manifest.

The guard says, “ _T’es Quebecois, toi_?”

Logan yawns, like this is the most boring night of his life. “ _Oui. Temps affreux, n’est-ce pas_?”

“ _Terrible! Je ne peux pas attendre pour rentrer chez moi_.”

“ _Je suis d’accord_.” With that, Logan grunts and shifts the truck back into gear to drive, a signal he’d like to move on. Ororo whips up the wind so that the chill will bite through the guard’s uniform. Sure enough, they’re waved through.

As the truck lumbers past the border, she mutters, “When did you learn French?”

“News flash: I’m Canadian.” He takes a deeper drag from his cigar. “Breathe easy, would ya? We’re outta there.”

“Like I can breathe easy with your smog in this cab.” But she’s laughing, and so is he.

Outside, the snow thickens and softens, changing from sludge to the stuff Christmases are made of.

**

The mining town’s more derelict than Logan remembered – that, or his standards have gotten higher since he stopped living in the trailer. Maybe a little of both. But by the time they reach town, everybody who can’t teleport is cramped, and absolutely everyone’s tired, so the rickety little houses look better than any more time in the back of a truck.

Everybody calls places, running around through the snow, grabbing their pick. Ororo tries to pull things into some kind of order, and Logan helps, mostly by yelling everything she says louder than she said it. They get the littler kids into the bigger houses; Ororo will live with the girls, and Beast with the boys.

Maybe he ought to be pissed that Ororo doesn’t think he’s chaperone material, but hey, she’s right.

Dr. MacTaggart commandeers a house in the center of town for the Professor. He doesn’t stir the whole time they get him settled in. Increasingly, Logan feels like Xavier hasn’t come back at all – like they just have a body they have to keep mourning. But the guy’s heart is beating, and he breathes in and out, and every day his face looks more like the one Logan remembers. So there’s gotta be something to it.

He notices that Bobby Drake and Kitty Pryde choose a house together, and he notices Marie watch them walk through the door. She’s alone on the “street,” which is only the place where their trucks have churned the snow into mud. There’s something about the way she stands there – dark eyes wide, long green coat rippling in the wind – that reminds him of when he met her, back when she was a girl, and he tried to drive away from her but couldn’t. But this time she simply moves on to find her own place, and Logan stands there watching her go for a second too long.

Later on, Bobby hides the trucks by icing them; plenty of the mutants have the power to defrost them in a hurry if they’re needed. Logan claims his own cabin – a shack on the edge of town, not much to it, but then, he doesn’t need much beyond a roof and a wood stove. He, Beast and Colossus unpack the supplies they brought along. The foodstuffs seemed like enough for an army when they loaded them up, but realistically, that’s going to hold them for two or three months at best.

Are they still going to be here then? Will the kids be hidden well enough that they can get out there and fight? Logan wishes like hell he knew.

Beast muses, “We’ll have to go into town before too long. I know our presence is legal here, but obviously we should remain off the radar.”

“We could hunt,” Logan says. “Plenty of deer up around here. Elk, too. Bet we could build a smokehouse.”

“We haven’t any hunting rifles. Our weaponry is mostly anti-aircraft – using a bazooka against woodland animals does seem like overkill.”

“Forget rifles. You and me, we’ve got claws.” Logan smirks, laying down the dare. “Ready to get in touch with your animal side?”

“Good heavens,” Beast says, but that’s not a no. Huh. Might be an interesting hunting expedition.

By sunset – which is about midafternoon this far north in December – they’re more or less settled in. The kids are excited: snowball fights, makeshift sleds, and more laughter than Logan’s heard in way too long. They’ll be bored as hell before a week is out, but they might as well enjoy the moment. Even the adults are giddy and almost relaxed.

Volt charges up the old restaurant/saloon/whatever it was in the heart of town, so they have electric lights for the evening and the jukebox works. The kids crowd into the back room where there’s a TV; it’s not picking up any signal, because there’s been no time to set up their communications yet, but the back room has a DVD player and a movie they want to watch, something about robots and explosions. The adults hang in the front, dancing and drinking from the cases of beer Logan brought on his own initiative. It’s a party, the first time they’ve all been happy and safe since Professor Xavier died.

Temporarily died. Whatever they’re calling it.

“I tend to prefer wine, but I must say this is a splendid brew.” Beast preens his fur as he gulps down the cheapest suds imaginable. He must’ve had a few by now. “Well chosen, my friend.”

“We keep knocking them back like this, we’ll run out before the week’s done.”

“Tonight’s a special occasion!” Storm insists. She’s looser than Logan’s ever seen her, one arm slung around Nightcrawler and the other hand wrapped around her beer can. “We should revel in it while we can.”

“Amen to that.” Logan bumps his can against hers, and she laughs.

Across the room, he glimpses Bobby and Kitty wrapped around each other, slow dancing. They’re only one of many couples snuggling up, but he can’t help looking away from them for Marie. Sure enough, she’s in the far corner, telling Moira MacTaggart about the flying lessons she’s going to take … and trying not to see her ex and her friend getting cozy.

So he chugs the last of his beer, tosses the can and walks over to her.

“Hey,” Logan says, putting one hand on her bare forearm. He knows she appreciates being touched casually, like anybody else; most people still don’t do that with her. “You want to dance?”

Her eyes light up, and he thinks he might have gone a step too far with the comfort – but too late now, because she’s waving bye to Moira and taking his hand. As she swings into his arms, on the jukebox Aretha Franklin starts singing “Try A Little Tenderness.”

Marie’s right hand curves around the base of his neck. He’s still expecting her gloves, maybe, because his whole skin reacts to her touch – and not in the old way. Much better than that.

She dips her head slightly, bashful. “I didn’t think you would dance.”

“I dance.”

“Guess you do.” Marie’s eyes dart up to his, though her face is still lowered. “Everybody’s so excited.”

“We’ll see what they think after the third blizzard of the winter rolls in.”

She grins. They’re by the jukebox now, an old one with lights that blink through turquoise and pink glass panels; the colors seem to flicker in the white strands of her hair. “For a guy who hauls himself up to the frozen tundra every chance he gets, you sure don’t seem to like it much.”

“Me, I like it fine. But I’m easily amused.”

Now Marie’s laughing, and Logan feels like he’s done his job. He’s cheered her up. She doesn’t even seem to notice Bobby and Kitty over there.

Not noticing them at all, actually.

They sway to the beat of the music, and her smile fades slightly as she pulls her hand from his and wraps it around his waist. Logan knows he ought to swing her around or make a joke, something like that, but instead his fingers find the curve of her hip. The way she hitches into that touch, right as the beat thumps and their eyes meet –

\--well, he’s never gonna be able to call her “kid” again.

They don’t say another word as the song plays out, just move together, almost unable to keep looking each other in the eyes.

When Aretha finishes, some ‘80s metal starts screeching; mostly people cheer and thrash around – even Beast, who apparently gets his rock’n’roll on after a few cans of Schlitz. Logan wraps his hand around Marie’s and they walk together to the side door.

As they step outside, she pulls her green cloak around her. He’ll make do with the leather jacket. The door swings shut, which makes it – not quiet, but not bedlam any longer. Their newly adopted home looks like some kind of Hallmark card, little houses all in the snow, bathed in blue moonlight.

Marie leans against the wall, studying him with equal parts eagerness and caution. Logan’s starting to wonder why he ever thought she was still worrying about Bobby Drake.

“Listen,” he says. “You and me – ” What the hell is he supposed to say?

A hesitant smile plays upon her full lips. “I guess you know I’ve always liked you.”

How does he put this? A lie would be the best way out, but she’s always made him too honest for his own good. “I’ve got a soft spot for you, too. But I’m way the hell too old for you, Marie.”

“Well, if all that stuff about you not aging is for real, you’re way too old for anybody.” Then her eyes go wide as she realizes how that sounded. “Um. Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s true.”

Marie laughs again, and he realizes she’s not going to fight him on this. He’s equal parts relieved and disappointed.

“I know you’ve been – waiting a while.” Is that the best way to put it? Logan plows on. “But you’ve got all the time in the world now. You’re gonna find some other guy with a lot less mileage.”

“What if I don’t?” she says softly. Maybe she’s going to fight him a little. “What if it’s ten years later, and I’m still waiting?”

Logan knows good and well he shouldn’t say this, but he does: “Then next time, you ask me to dance.” As she sucks in a breath, he backtracks as best he can. “You won’t be waiting, though. Some guy’ll scoop you up so fast it’ll make your head spin. You’ll bring him to me to show him off, and I’ll hate his punk ass, and you two are gonna go off happily ever after.”

“Happily ever after?” Marie rolls her eyes. “That’s so cheesy.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I do.”

They’re illuminated by neon beer signs, and the clamor of the party on the other side of the wall fills the silence between them. Logan imagines it as the other, happier life she’s got waiting for her – very near, very wonderful, and something he’s not ever really going to be a part of. He wants that for Marie, always did, so he doesn’t understand how he got confused about this.

“I hear you, okay?” Marie puts one hand on the leather sleeve of his jacket. “It’s better this way, and I know that. But – I just – dangit. Here goes.”

She leans forward and kisses him. Logan responds without deciding to, without thinking; one of his arms curves around her by instinct. They don’t open their mouths, and the kiss doesn’t even last that long – but longer than any other guy could ever have kissed her before. Simple as the touch is, it blazes through him like a wildfire.

Marie’s the one who pulls back first. All she says is, “Just had to do that once.” Then she slips back through the door to rejoin the party.

Logan leans against the wall and stares at the snow. The chill slips in through the open leather jacket, but he thinks he’s going to stay out here for a while. Obviously he needs to cool off.


	13. Hank

There is, after all, something cleansing about getting in touch with one’s primal instincts, Hank decides.

He hasn’t been to a committee meeting of any sort in months. The last official communication he had with anybody in government was his resignation letter – which was timed to arrive only after they’d already crossed the Canadian border. No more passive-aggressive emails lurk within his in-box. No more power lunches crowd his calendar. Now there’s just the splendor of a winter morning and the snow beneath his paws.

“I’d say you were going native,” Logan says as he uses his cigar to gesture at Hank’s feet. “But the natives wear boots.”

“Bosh. My feet are better suited for this than any boots could ever be.” His fur has thickened these past two weeks, adapting to the chill. “Now, instruct me in the finer points of deerstalking.”

“You start off trying not to stink up the place.” With that, Logan puts his cigar out in the snow, then tucks it into his jacket for relighting later. “C’mon, Furball. Let’s get out there.”

They head deep into the woods; the scent of pine is thick and heady. It’s the smell that reminds him of one of the smaller issues they ought to deal with. “Christmas is only a week away. What will we do for the children?”

“Christmas already? Hell.”

Most of the students have always been runaways, and so the school has always been more or less full during the holidays. Xavier’s practice had been to have something individual for each child – and the world’s most powerful mind reader always knew precisely what to buy. (Hank well remembers the year he received his annotated complete works of Shakespeare.) Then there was something larger for the school as a whole, whether that was a new soccer field or video games, and a trip into Manhattan for the extravaganza at Radio City Music Hall. Hank will always associate Christmas with the Rockettes.

But this year, those traditions have fallen by the wayside, possibly forever.

“I suppose we’ve no shortage of firs,” Hank says, taking in the forest that surrounds them. “And we could decorate the old-fashioned way. Popcorn and tinfoil. That sort of thing. Though I believe tradition must stop well short of lighted candles on the trees, for safety’s sake. What would you suggest?”

Logan gives him a look. “I can’t remember the last time I spent Christmas doin’ anything besides watching bowl games.”

Given Logan’s amnesia about anything more than two decades in the past, Hank gathers he’s being literal. “Well, then, all the more reason to make this a celebration worthy of the name.”

Logan stops in his tracks, and without the sound of snow crunching underfoot, the woods are deadly silent around them. Before Hank can ask whether perhaps the holidays are a sensitive subject for Logan – unlikely, but one never knows – he picks up the sound himself. Kitty Pryde’s voice echoes through the woods: “Hank! Logan! Come quick!”

They take off, running back at full speed, but the snow is deep and mutant powers don’t make it easier to track through. So Hank leaps into a tree, feels the trunk bend slightly as he braces his great paws against it, then bounds forward into the next. Soon he’s whipping through the branches far faster than he could move on foot. Although he hears Logan swearing, he knows that’s only because one of the trees must have sprayed wet snow all over him. Reaching the students is imperative.

When Hank reaches the clearing, he sees that all the mutants, children and adults alike, are crowding into the communal building that has become the dining hall – and where they’ve set up the first computer terminal. At least they’re not under attack, but what in blue blazes is going on?

“Get the children out of here!” Ororo’s voice calls from within, but that’s easier said that done, partly because everyone considers “the children” to be people younger than they are, and partly because nobody will tear themselves from whatever is going on inside. Hank uses his formidable shoulders to push through the group and get closer.

What he sees is a cable news broadcast, complete with stock market ticker at the bottom, and low-resolution footage of men in camouflage gear, holding guns aloft.

“The federal government would take away our Redemption Rifles!” one of them cries. “They would remove any chance of bringing these mutants back to God!”

The Purifiers. Wrong-headed as ever, and now apparently armed en masse, but why is everyone so panicked?

Hank gets his answer when the man continues – and holds aloft what appears to be a person’s head.

The news station has pixilated the image, but there’s no mistaking it. The greenness of the skin makes it clear this head belonged to a mutant. People groan and shudder, and he hears someone gag.

“When we give them a choice, they refuse redemption! This one refused and paid the price of sin! The little children we can Cure if the government will stop unlawfully attempting to restrict our right to bear arms. They have a chance to be saved. But these mutants who embrace their deviance cannot be suffered to live. And we defend humanity and all God’s creation by eradicating them!”

Beast realizes he feels somewhat dizzy. Logan finally stumbles into the dining hall, wet with melted snow; his super-sharp ears would have picked up the details long ago. His face takes on a set, angry cast as he walks to Marie, who is one of the many who have begun to sob.

Ororo says what they’re all thinking. “We ought to be there. We should have stayed behind to defend them.”

“Nein,” Nightcrawler says. “The children. They must come first.”

Logan growls, “Now the kids are safe. Where do we go from here?”

“We don’t know where to be,” Beast says sorrowfully. “There are no battle lines. There are only vigilantes.”

“So we hunt ‘em down.” Logan’s head is lowered, his shoulders set and his hair bristling, for all the world like an animal about to fight. “We find ‘em, and we educate ‘em on what’s a sin and what’s not.”

“And if you’re Cured?” Raven says. “What will you do then? And what will they do to you?” Her own disheveled, all-too-human body makes the point better than her words could.

A silence falls.

The announcers on television are apologizing for graphic images. They say something about shipments of Cure being stolen from pharmaceutical warehouses – accusations of lack of enforcement – everything and nothing. It’s just noise in Beast’s ears, like the rushing of his pulse. His gut clenches with nausea.

Anger crests in Raven’s voice as she speaks again. “We have to find another way to fight them.” Her words are steady; she seems like a functional adult again. “I’m already human. There’s no help for me. But I could use a gun.”

Guns. They don’t shoot at people. But now people are shooting at them. Does that have to change?

Raven continues, “They want to hunt us down? We’ll hunt them down. One of theirs for one of ours. Blood for blood.”

“That’s enough,” Ororo says sharply. She takes one step toward Raven, who shrinks back into the frightened child she’s been the past several weeks. “They’re lowlifes and thugs. We’re not stooping to that level.”

Thank God it was Raven who said it, Hank thinks. The others will reject that line of thinking because it came from her. Nobody will have to admit that, in this horrible moment, somebody else might have said the same. Almost anybody else.

Raven starts to walk away from them all, as if she might simply wander into the woods for a long time or maybe forever, but Hank catches her hand in his great paw. His pads aren’t as soft as his fingertips used to be; he wishes he’d held Raven’s hand more back when he so wanted to.

“There’s one thing Raven said I agree with,” he declares. “We have to find new ways to fight.” Nods, murmurs of agreement: Everyone understands this. Simply protecting the children – that was where they had to begin, but what next? How do they combat the Cure?

Raven gives him a watery smile of thanks for his loyalty, but Hank cannot think of that. He can only hurry the children outside as the video begins to play again, then huddle with them in the clearing as they cry. After a while, it turns out the snow is cold beneath his paws after all.


	14. Erik

Erik feels as if he has walked the entire distance from Massachusetts to the northernmost reaches of Canada. This isn’t true, but his weary, underfed body feels the weight of each mile.

And he _has_ been walking for the past two days, nonstop.

The last hour of sunlight makes the sky overhead rosy, but he rarely looks up. At this point, Erik is steering not by the compass he begrudgingly bought, nor by the muddled directions he received in Loughlin City. The almost formless consciousness he senses grows stronger and stronger in his mind, defining his path and driving him on.

This is better than a legitimate border crossing, at least. Erik has long-distant memories of trying to board a train with false papers that were spotted at once; such checkpoints fill him with a horror he’s never fully mastered. So he has made his way through the wilderness, once ducking to hide from a cruising pickup truck full of Purifier vigilante groups, singing their damnable hymns, looking for R.D.s and hoisting high their “Redemption Rifles.”

Ah, for the ability to crush vehicles again.

Such jokes are hollow to him now, though. Nothing matters now except finding Charles and saving him – if Charles really is there to be found. Erik knows this may be no more than his final madness.

When at last he stumbles through the foot-deep snow into the clearing, Erik sees a tiny village nestled in the drifts, curls of smoke rising from wood-stove chimneys and a few children dashing into one of the larger homes, which has candles burning in the windows. If those candles were set in a menorah, he’d believe he had walked back in time to the small town outside Dusseldorf where his grandmother once lived.

If this is madness, so be it. Turning back is impossible. If this is all real, Charles is in dire straits. If it isn’t? His feet and hands are numb, his Another two days of this would kill him.

He walks the final distance to another house with burning candles. It sings to him as powerfully as magnetic north ever did. As he approaches, he hears voices from inside:

 _“I’m telling you, Colossus can’t be touched. He stays metal? Those darts don’t stand a chance.”_

 _“Even Piotr cannot remain metal all the time, and there’s a limit to what he can do alone.”_

 _“Do we go after the Cure itself? Just stop the Purifiers from getting it?”_

 _“We mustn’t forget the political aspects of our actions. Public opinion is finally turning against the Purifiers because of the violence; we need to capitalize on that, not waste it.”_

Such practical notions. Can these be X-Men? Maybe he’s hallucinating after all. Time to find out. Erik pulls together his shabby clothes, draws his dignity around him like the warm coat he does not have, and knocks on the door.

Storm opens it, and her jaw drops open.

“Good evening,” he says. Then he takes in the pine boughs draped over tabletops, the glasses of cheap-smelling wine, and the decorated tree. “Perhaps I should say, happy holidays.”

Wolverine appears behind her shoulder, his outrage as overblown as it is predictable. “Magneto? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I believe I’ve been invited.”

He steps inside without waiting to be asked, and they are apparently too shocked to stop him. The other people inside are known to him: Beast and, surprisingly, Moira MacTaggart. None of them look thrilled to see their uninvited guest, but none of them are who he came for.

The next is the hardest to say. If he is wrong, he will never be able to bear it. But he must ask. “Charles is … alive again, isn’t he?”

The looks they exchange leave him in one more moment of wretched suspense, before Storm says, “How did you know that?”

It’s real. It’s all real. Charles lives.

He wishes he still believed in a god, so he would know whom to thank. Gratitude, astonishment and weakness conspire to overwhelm him, but he stays on his feet. No point in marching so far to fail now.

“I know.” Erik taps two fingers against his temple. “Take me to him.”

More worried glances. Beast says, “I’m not certain about this.”

Moira stands, resolute as ever. “What is it you think you can accomplish?”

“Only what I’ve already accomplished.” How can he explain this to people who weren’t there, who have never known the intimacy of Charles’ mind as he has? Moira ought to understand, at least. But Charles wiped that, didn’t he? Erik puts it as simply as possible: “When we first worked together, years ago, Charles sometimes – overextended himself. Became misplaced within his own mind, you might say. He kept himself tethered to me. When he became lost, I could help him find his way again.”

“You could just be here to kill him,” Wolverine retorts. Stupid creature.

It’s Moira who shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. The connection must be real. Otherwise, how could he have found us?”

Wolverine only looks angrier. “Mystique, maybe? They could’ve been planning this all along.”

So. Mystique is here. Recalling their last meeting fills Erik with shame. How can he ever explain to her the fear that drove him then? But he can’t think of that now. He has come all this way to complete a journey – not his own – and no other goal comes close.

“This is a risk,” Storm says.

“Look at him,” Beast says quietly. “I doubt he could cause us much trouble, or make the Professor any worse.”

What a scarecrow he must appear. But Erik keeps his head high as he repeats, “Take me to Charles.”

Moira puts her hand on his elbow and guides him backwards in the house. The others follow slightly behind, ready to jump him should he try something. Erik wonders what they think he could try in this state. Perhaps he might faint threateningly.

But such petty concerns fall away when Moira pushes open the door to a small room, only big enough for a slim cast-iron bed, on which Charles lies.

Charles is here. The impossible has happened. Erik, who stopped asking the world even for kindness when he was still a child, has been given a miracle.

But at first Erik wonders whether starvation has warped his mind, because this Charles is far closer to the one he knew and loved decades ago than to the one he last saw. There’s hair on his head, and his face looks youthful. He might be napping in the bed they shared in 1962. And yet there is no spark or illumination of life save for the rise and fall of his chest, and the flickering glow of memories within Erik’s own mind.

Shakily he sits on the edge of Charles’ bed and takes his hands. He squeezes and thinks, _This is your right hand._ Squeezes again. _This is your left._

“… don’t like this … ” Wolverine is grumbling behind him. So many whispers. All irrelevant.

Back then, they learned that simple cues were the best. Simple, basic, both physical and mental. Were they alone, Erik would use the many variations on the theme – stroking Charles’ face, his limbs, even kissing one side of his face and then the other.

 _Your right hand. Your left._

He needs a pleasant memory for them -- something simple, uncomplicated. But also something recent; that makes finding such a memory more difficult. Erik fishes until he realizes something that will do: One of the visits Charles made to him when he was trapped in that plastic human prison. Though Erik loathed his confinement, Charles’ frequent visits had been his lone source of comfort. They’d talked easily of other matters, most of the time. Played chess. Listened to symphonies as Charles remembered them for Erik, the sound filling his mind with more resonance than any stereo could match.

But he focuses on the first visit, when Charles had brought him a weathered hardback copy of THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING.

 _You always loved this,_ Charles had said. _Do you still?_

 _Oh, yes._

Their fingers had brushed as Charles handed it to him.

Erik concentrates on the book, on the moment when he’d smiled at Charles again and Charles had smiled back.

 _Your right hand. Your left. You’re you. I’m me. We’re here._

Charles sucks in a ragged breath and opens his eyes.

“We’re here,” Erik repeats aloud, strengthening his grip on Charles’ hands. Nobody could tear him away. “You’re here with me.”

“Professor?” Storm leans closer as Moira comes around the side and puts two fingers to the pulse at Charles’ neck. “Can you hear us?”

Charles manages to nod. He swallows, an odd choking sound as if he’d forgotten how, then croaks, “Hungry.”

“You must be,” Moira says briskly. How like her not to be thrown even now. “You’ve only had IV nourishment for months. We’ll heat up some of the chicken broth.”

Though speaking is clearly painful for him, Charles says, “Erik too.”

He’d forgotten how much love can _hurt._ It’s like a vise clamping around his heart.

 _You were really there_ , Charles projects into his head. _I thought I was dreaming you._

 _I thought I was the one dreaming._ Erik squeezes his hand again, weak from relief, starvation and joy.

Beast says, “We have some venison downstairs. Rather gamy but surprisingly good when you become accustomed to it.”

“No,” Moira says tersely. “Chicken broth for him too – maybe some crackers. Scrambled eggs tomorrow if that stays down.”

Though he longs for solid food, he sees the sense of this. “Very well,” Erik says. “But bring it to me here.”

Wolverine and Beast exchange a look that clearly means, _Look who’s giving orders._ Yet Beast fetches him a mug. Erik takes his hands from Charles’ in order to eat – oh, warmth, protein, salt, how he missed them – but he does not budge from the bedside while the others tend to matters medical.

 _How did you cheat death, Charles?_

 _I’m not sure._ Even telepathically, Charles sounds dazed. But his blue eyes never leave Erik’s; their shared gaze is their only strength. _I’ve hardly had a chance to consider. Being lost like that – the hell of it –_

 _I know. Better than you can imagine._

“You say Charles summoned you here?” Moira asks as she takes a blood pressure reading. Charles is propped up on pillows, able to drink the broth Beast feeds him by tilting a cup to his mouth.

“Not precisely.” Erik keeps looking at Charles’ face, trying to make this all sensible and logical. Already his mad quest seems like a fever dream that has somehow come true. “Our minds have remained linked, despite our – later disagreements. I sought that link, he responded intuitively, and here we are.”

“Why did you seek it?” Storm demands. “If you thought he was dead?”

“Habit.” No one deserves any truer answer than that – no one save Charles himself, and he already knows.

“And I – I sought him in turn.” Charles’ voice remains rusty from disuse. He swallows hard before continuing, “Instinct.”

The corner of Erik’s mouth lifts in the ghost of a smile.


	15. Marie

“The Professor!” Bobby shouts, startling Marie from her sleep. He’s running through the village and shouting the news. “The Professor! He’s awake!”

At first she thinks she must have heard wrong, that it’s just a dream or wishful thinking; the big news must be that Professor X died again. But the yelps of delight she hears, the slamming of doors as people rush from their cabins toward the Professor’s cabin, convinces her it must be true.

Marie laughs out loud as she bounds from the covers and throws on the first clothes she can find – battered jeans, socks that don’t match – forget the bra – and a scratchy sweater that makes her sorry she left out the bra but not sorry enough to slow down. She’s still stomping her foot into a boot as she heads out the door, coat open and not caring about the chill. All the mutants are running there at once, some of them jumping up and down or sending out sparks in their excitement. Nobody gives Marie any weird looks; nobody suggests she shouldn’t be there, or that she can’t be as overjoyed as the rest of them. She belongs again, really belongs, and that makes her almost happy as the Professor’s resurrection.

When they reach the cabin, Storm’s on the front step to hold back the crowd; even as she keeps people from getting inside, she grins. “Everybody calm down! The Professor needs some time, okay? He’s very tired.”

“He’s been in bed for weeks!” Kitty protests, but it’s a joke, and everybody laughs. The laughter is mostly jubilation, though. Even Marie can’t stop smiling at her; all that nonsense with Bobby feels a long way away. It felt like they almost missed Christmas, with everyone so depressed about the Purifier attacks, but the joy has caught up with them now, even better for the delay.

“Dr. MacTaggart is looking after him. As soon as it’s okay for him to have visitors, I promise, you’ll be the first to know.” While Storm says this, though, Hank appears behind her, his massive blue form filling the doorway.

“Forgive me, Ororo, but – the Professor says he’d like to see everyone.” As cheers erupt again, Hank holds out a paw. “Briefly! You must all be quiet and on your very best behavior.”

Instantly the entire group stills. Marie imagines she can even hear the snowflakes falling.

Storm doesn’t think this is wise; that’s obvious. However, she steps aside and lets them begin to file in. They are as quiet as a couple dozen teenagers in snow boots can possibly be.

Marie’s one of the last up the stairs – serves her right, going to bed early the one night something major happened. So she’s at the very back, just outside the door of the Professor’s bedroom, but that’s close enough to see him. He looks … different. In a nice way, younger and even kind of cute, which is not a way she ever expected to think about him. But it’s definitely Professor X.

“Hello there.” His voice is hoarse, and he’s piled up on pillows. “How wonderful to see you all.”

“Better to see you, Professor,” Bobby says, then dares to add, “Looking good!”

Everyone giggles, and even the Professor smiles wearily as he brushes back his actual, honest-to-goodness hair. “I doubt this will last. Lucky me. I get to go bald twice.” They laugh again at one of his rare jokes, but mostly everybody’s just excited that he’s back.

“Can we hug you?” one of the tiniest ones, a girl with pink pigtails, asks.

“Not everyone,” Dr. MacTaggart insists. “One very gentle hug. Total.”

“Come here.” The Professor holds a hand out to her, and little Noemie embraces him gingerly, as if he might break. People are rocking back and forth, nudging each other and grinning from ear to ear. Marie looks through the crowd for Logan – there he is, still hanging onto a beer can while he stands in a far corner; she can maybe get him to celebrate later. She’s old enough to drink in Canada, so there shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Then she sees who stands a few feet away from Logan.

Marie gasps just as someone else recognizes him and cries out, “What’s _he_ doing here?”

Magneto. He’s right there, right in their secret hideout, only a few feet from the Professor. The man looks like a ragged shadow of himself but it’s still Magneto, the person who tried to kill her. For his part, Magneto merely lifts his chin and stares back at the crowd, undaunted.

Quietly Storm says, “Magneto helped awaken the Professor. We owe him one.” The tone of her voice clearly adds _For now._

“We’re all in this together,” Professor X manages to say; even this quick visit has tired him already. “Mr. Lehnsherr has a place here. Everyone remember that.”

Marie’s not one bit sure she agrees, but she knows better than anyone the history between Magneto and the Professor – why he might come here, why he might be the one who could reach through Xavier’s coma. For weeks after her abduction and near-death at Liberty Island, Magneto’s memories and emotions echoed within her mind. Their old love affair is as real to her as some of her own experiences. While Marie feels some genuine pity for what the man has been through, she doesn’t think it excuses what he’s done to her or to anyone.

If he woke the Professor, he’s done everybody a favor. Reason enough not to shout him down now, she guesses. But she folds her arms in front of her chest and tries not to look at Magneto directly.

Obviously she isn’t the only one in the room who is dismayed to find their old enemy there, because Beast speaks to Magneto next, obviously trying to jolly things along.

“I must admit, you’re not precisely the angel I would have expected to bring a Christmas miracle,” Beast says. “Yet that’s what we have here. Well, we’re a few days late for that, but I suppose a New Year’s miracle will more than suffice.”

“I’m more appropriate for the task than you might think,” Magneto replies. “You see, I bring good tidings of great joy.”

He flicks two of his fingers toward Logan and sends his metal beer can flying halfway across the room. Suds spatter the walls, and Logan swears before he turns to stare at Magneto. Gasps of shock ripple through the group.

“The Cure,” Logan says. “We dosed you at Alcatraz. I know we hit you.”

“You did.” Magneto smiles in satisfaction. “But, you see, the Cure is no Cure at all.”

Everyone starts talking at once (“ _That’s why China still killed their top-level mutants! They must have known about this_.”), and even Storm and Dr. MacTaggart are so caught up they don’t hush people for Professor X’s sake. Marie sucks in a sharp breath as she braces herself against the doorjamb.

The Cure isn’t a real cure.

It doesn’t last.

Her mutation will return.

A decision she thought she’d made has been undone.

Marie takes off down the stairs, going two at a time, blinking back tears. Behind her, she hears Logan call her name, but she can’t face him like this. Into the snow she runs, not toward her cabin but just blindly forward into the forest.

“Marie!” Logan’s faster than her; he catches up only a few feet into the pines. His hand closes around her forearm, and momentum swings her around until they’re almost face to face. “Hang on, okay?”

“You saw what Magneto did,” she chokes out. “You saw it. The Cure doesn’t work, not for real.”

“Doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“Don’t lie to me! Do you think it’s going to make me feel better? It won’t!”

He seizes her by the shoulders. “Listen to me. Magneto might’ve got less than a full dose – we were in action, it was quick, not much time to check. Or maybe everybody reacts differently to the stuff, so what doesn’t work for him might still work for you. We can talk to Doc MacTaggart, see what she thinks.”

“You don’t understand.” Marie refuses to look him in the face.

“Don’t be like that, darlin’.” The endearment flows over her, too swiftly carried away in the current of her confused emotions. “The Cure’s all over the place these days. If it wears off, hell, take some more. Not so bad, right?”

“You don’t understand _at all_.” She wrenches herself from his grip. “Don’t you get it, Logan?”

“Obviously not. So how about you enlighten me?”

A few steps through the thick, soft snow take her to a dead tree, long fallen to the ground; its trunk remains solid enough to sit upon once she’s brushed a space clear. The space is hardly big enough for two, but Logan does sit with her, right by her side. She can feel the warmth of his jean-clad thigh next to hers. It takes Marie a long time to find the words; Logan doesn’t speak the whole time, just waits.

Ultimately she manages to say, “There are people here who hate me for taking the Cure.” Before Logan can protest, she cuts him off: “Okay, hate is too strong. And it’s gotten a lot better lately. But even now some people think I don’t belong here. And I don’t know that they’re wrong.”

“Anybody says you don’t belong here has a problem I’m dyin’ to solve.”

“This isn’t something you can fix for me.” Marie likes the idea that he’d try, though. “Logan, mutants are being converted right out of existence. We’re going to have to fight for our right to live the way we were born. So taking the Cure – choosing not to be a mutant – I feel like a hypocrite.”

He doesn’t argue with her right away, which surprises her, and when he speaks, he takes it slow. “Maybe we’re not fighting for our right to live the way we were born. Maybe we’re fighting for the right to choose how we’re gonna live.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” As good as that sounds to her, her weary heart can’t take any comfort. “If I take the Cure again, it’ll wear off again. That means I’ll have to make the choice over and over, and there’s no way it’s not going to separate me from the rest of you. But I don’t want to go back and be part of a regular world that’s scared of mutants and wants us gone, either. There’s all these questions, and no answers, and it just makes me feel seasick inside.”

“Hey.” Logan puts his arm around her, and the stealthy pull of her attraction to him tugs at her insides. “You’ll figure it out. No matter what you decide – I’m with you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Marie turns her eyes up to him, and it’s like she can see him melt.

A “soft spot” for her – that’s what Logan said he has. Suddenly reckless, she decides to strike at it.

“Logan?” she whispers. “If I do wind up not Cured someday soon – ”

“Yeah?”

“I’d better not wait ten years to ask you to dance.”

Before he can react to that, almost before he can hear it, Marie lifts her face to his and kisses him.

She expects Logan to pull away, to remind her that she’s not eighty zillion years old yet, but she can take another lecture if it means she gets one more kiss.

Logan doesn’t pull away.

His lips press against hers, and his fingers tangle in her hair. Marie gasps, breaking the contact; this time he’s the one who kisses her. Their kisses quicken, grow hungrier, and then Logan’s tongue slips into her mouth. This feels different than she daydreamed it would – not better, not worse, just different – then it changes, and there’s something about the way his tongue slides against hers that cuts off any kind of analysis or confusion. Her head lets go and her body takes over.

Marie wraps her arms around his shoulders, the better to keep him close; Logan’s hands capture her around her waist. His fingers wind up inside her sweater, just above the line of her jeans – accidentally, she thinks, but even the slight brush of his cool skin against her bare back makes her heart leap. The thick wool of her sweater now feels too rough against her sensitive breasts, and she wonders if he’ll touch her there – she wants him to –

“Wait.” Logan leans his cheek against hers, practically panting against her neck. “Hang on a sec.”

“I don’t want to wait,” she says, meaning the words in every way she possibly could.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Dammit, Logan!” Marie could skin him. She grabs the collar of his coat as if she were going to shake him. Anger and arousal and triumph careen around inside her, making it impossible to know how she really feels. “You want this too; I know you do.”

“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what I ought to do.”

“You ought to come back to my cabin with me.”

No sooner do the words leave her mouth than Marie feels a small quail of uncertainty. Yes, she wants Logan – wants to have the knowledge of sex – but could she really do that tonight? Go from her first French kiss to making love in the same hour?

Logan hesitates; she can see the yearning there, the way his desire is being ground against his conscience. She feels as if her bluff is about to get called. Yet excitement starts to win out over nervousness –

But Logan turns his head. “Marie, we’re not doing this.”

For one awful moment, she thinks she might cry; her anger saves her. “You can’t decide whether I get to make my own choices or not.”

His face hasn’t looked this hard since he found her stowed away in his trailer back in Loughlin City when they first met. She’s always remembered how he couldn’t drive off and leave her; it’s been a long time since she thought about the fact that he tried to leave. “You get to make yours. I get to make mine.”

It’s as final as a slammed door. Marie stands up and walks off before she can say anything else; she’d like to keep some dignity, if that’s even possible.

He pretends not to follow her, to watch her safely back; she pretends not to notice him doing it.


	16. Raven

Raven hears the commotion outside, but it’s some kind of celebration for them – the X-Men, the mutants. It’s not for her. She pulls her pillow atop her head and tries to sleep. The nightmares aren’t too bad, for once. Perhaps hearing other people be happy helps in some way. She’ll have to ask Beast.

Over the past two months, she’s gotten to like asking Beast things. He always answers if he can, and never pretends to know anything he doesn’t. Charles was always terrible at the former, Erik at the latter, which means she fully appreciates both qualities.

And he is so beautiful. So strong and steady. So … kind. That’s not something she ever thought much about before.

Maybe, if Beast touched her, the blue would rub off on her human skin.

She awakens with a smile on her face for once, which lasts all the way through getting ready and walking to the communal dining room for breakfast, until she hears the word that freezes her in her tracks: _Magneto._

“So, what, he’s staying here?” asks one oafish teenager, the one called Volt, she thinks.

Another: “For now, I guess. He’s at the Professor’s – I mean, he’s the one who woke Professor X up, so maybe we owe him.”

Yet another: “Owe Magneto? Come on!”

Raven slips out of the dining room silently, without even fetching the bowlful of gluey instant oatmeal she’s due. It must have snowed throughout the night, because she has to make fresh tracks through many inches of it to reach Beast’s cabin. His door isn’t locked: weird. Why would anyone sleep without a locked door?

And Beast is still sound asleep. He’s not a morning person, never was. As she looks down at him, sprawled across nearly the whole mattress, snoring peaceably, with a volume of Tolstoy on the bedside – Raven can’t resist the tide of memory. It’s not so different from when he would oversleep for classes, and she would leap in to wake him up, and take advantage to tickle him through the sheets for the joy of making him blush.

Today, though, she shakes his furry shoulder. “Beast. Get up.”

“Hmmph?” He opens his wide eyes, not unlike the way he did all those years ago. “My goodness.”

“Is Erik here?”

Beast remains still for a moment before replying. “Yes, Raven. He is. He arrived late last night and helped Professor Xavier to awaken.”

Charles and Erik back at once – it’s almost too much for her to handle. Raven sits heavily on the foot of Beast’s bed; he sits up next to her, fur rumpled, and waits for her to speak.

The first words she finds are, “I don’t remember how to look at either of them with this face.”

“Raven.” His large paw covers her hand. “You were the one who tried to tell me how unimportant appearances were, so long ago. I was the one who failed to listen.”

“That’s not what I mean.” But she’s not sure precisely what she does mean.

Over the past few decades, she taught herself to look at Charles as a villain and Erik as a kind of demigod. Both of those assessments were simplistic and wrong; down deep, Raven hopes she always knew that. But she’s not sure how to look at them just as people.

Though Charles at least will have his powers. It helps her, slightly, remembering that. Even her old terror of his telepathy is at least familiar in this odd new world.

Beast leans closer; his voice is gentle. “If you wanted to visit them, I’m sure they would both be happy to see you.”

“You’re surer than I am.”

“You’ll never know unless you try.”

“Which sounds like a good reason for not trying. I think I’d rather not know.”

Ever the scientist, ever curious, Beast frowns. He can’t imagine not wanting to know anything waiting to be known. “At least go to the Professor. I’m not even sure he knows you’re with us yet.”

“He has to hate the sight of me.” She taught herself to hate the sight of him.

“Why?” Beast harrumphs, whiskers twitching. “Raven, has it never occurred to you how … upside down all of this is? X-Men versus Brotherhood, mutants versus mutants? When did it become about fighting each other, instead of fighting for each other? It’s as if our core mission got lost too long ago. Well, I remember it now. I think the Professor always has, even when he wouldn’t admit it. Aren’t you ready to remember too?”

Fighting for each other – she likes the sound of that.

“I’ll go,” she says. “But if it turns ugly – ”

“It won’t.”

Raven leans her head against his shoulder; the soft fur against the back of her neck is comforting. “I wish I had your faith.” It’s the most honest thing she’s said to anyone in longer than she cares to remember.

“You have your own strength. And that’s more than enough.” Tentatively, he reaches his paw toward her face, and his claws comb through her hair.

In that moment, it feels as if Raven has traveled back in time. They are in the mansion again, teammates again, teenagers again – eager and uncertain, gazing at one another weak-kneed. The admiration in his eyes now is not so different from the adoration in his eyes then. If she could still shift her skin, she would become the young, blonde-haired girl he worshipped then, and she would give him the kiss they ought to have shared.

But she can’t shift her skin. Raven is herself, whoever that is, whatever she has become. And that is not a child who can surrender to illusions of the past.

She straightens. Beast’s paw falls to his own knee. The moment passes.

“I’ll go,” Raven says. “If Charles throws me out – ”

“He won’t.”

“He has the right.” She has never forgotten breaking back into the mansion – the same one she called home – and filling Cerebro with a liquid that she knew would harm Charles, one that could have killed him. “But – still, I want to see him. So maybe he wants to see me too.”

“I think so.” Beast smiles at her, but there’s something sad in it – the recognition, perhaps, of lost chances. Raven knows those well.

So she tromps through the snow toward the shack she knows belongs to Charles. She’s never bothered going anywhere near it before. Was there always a curl of smoke rising from the chimney? Probably – they’d hardly have left Charles comatose in his bed to freeze – but Raven never noticed it before. Everything seems more alive now. More susceptible to change. Thawing despite the deep December chill.

Raven lifts her hand to knock, then thinks better of it and simply walks in.

First she hears Charles.

“I’m not arguing with you.” Charles’ voice sounds strange – rough, unfamiliar – but it’s unmistakably him. “For once. I’m parsing this out for myself.”

“Of course you have some catching up to do.” But Erik turns caustic again in an instant. “Don’t you think the human governments could catch these thieves if they really tried? Don’t you think they’d have hunted down any such boastful murderers of humans?”

“They haven’t had much luck catching the human terrorists who do these things, so honestly, I don’t know the government’s intent and neither do you.”

“Can’t you just _tell_? Don’t tell me you’re suddenly respecting people’s privacy.”

“First, I do try to set some boundaries, which you know perfectly well. And second, even with Cerebro I’d be hard-pressed to simultaneously read the minds of thousands of individuals and discern their myriad feelings about a complex subject. Which you also know.”

They’re squabbling, the way they always did. Raven wonders if anyone else, overhearing this, would think this a bad sign – old enemies already at loggerheads, within a day of calling truce. However, she was there at the beginning: She remembers that their bickering is a mutually enjoyable sport. For Charles and Erik, only silence means danger. Now their words flow together, unceasing, overlapping, eager to touch.

Raven steps into the room. Charles is Charles, just as he was the day she left him in Cuba – brown floppy hair, blue eyes and the expression on his face that is only for Erik: a combination of exasperation and affection. Erik looks just as he did on the day he left her in that transport truck – steely grey hair, dignified bearing even as he lounges on the chair next to the sofa where Charles lies, and much the same expression as Charles wears. This seems appropriate to her, that they would both be precisely as they were; no discrepancy filters through to her still-unsettled mind.

Charles sees her first. “My God – Raven?”

She nods.

Nobody speaks for a few moments. Raven feels the brush of Charles’ mind, a feather-light psychic touch she remembers well – his way of making sure who’s there, no more. She wonders if he will break his old promise and finally read her mind; by now, she almost wishes he would. But he keeps his word. The touch disappears.

“What brought you here?” Charles says at last.

“The humans Cured me,” Raven says. “I didn’t know where else to go. So I went to the mansion looking for you.”

He leans his head against the back of the sofa. “Raven,” he says, and it is the first time he’s spoken to her in decades and sounded like the man she wanted to love. “I’m so glad you did. And everyone has been kind to you?”

“Beast has been kind. The others – nobody was unkind.” She doesn’t say this accusingly; this is as warm a welcome as she could have hoped for, and warmer than she’d have given in their place. In turn, Raven gives him what she can: “It’s good that you’re not dead any more.”

“Hank’s a fine man,” Charles says. “I’m glad you’re back.” Back, he says, as if they’d ever been to this desolate wilderness before. Yet it doesn’t feel untrue.

Erik clears his throat and rises from his chair. They face one another for the first time since the transport truck, when he saw her made human and turned away, leaving her behind. He has the good grace to look embarrassed. “I’ve made a discovery you’ll be happy to hear.”

She only raises an eyebrow.

“The humans’ Cure doesn’t work. Not permanently. In time, it wears off. Mystique – your mutation will return.”

It’s the most glorious news she could have received. Raven sucks in a sharp breath, too overwhelmed to laugh and too happy to cry. Immediately she reaches inside and tries to shift, to reclaim her beautiful blue skin, but human cells refuse to respond. Not yet, then – but soon. Soon. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

Raven fixes Erik in her hardest stare. “So you left me behind for nothing.”

Erik hesitates. She can see real shame in his eyes; it’s surprising how little that helps.

He starts to speak again, but she strikes him hard across the jaw.

That helps more.

Better yet is walking out, being the one who leaves him behind.


	17. Charles

Charles says, “Show me what you can do.”

Erik has been disconsolate since Raven left yesterday. After hearing why she was so bitter, Charles thought he didn’t blame her. He’s said nothing, though. There’s no mistaking how wretched Erik feels about it, and besides, Charles understands he isn’t exactly the authority on being sensitive to Raven’s feelings.

From his place in the side chair, Erik glances over at him, not much interested. “What do you mean?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“I suppose,” Erik sighs. A sheet of tinfoil skitters on the linoleum tabletop for a few seconds, then goes still.

“Surely you can do better than that,” Charles says. This can’t be the same Erik Lehnsherr who pulled a submarine from the depths of the ocean.

“Oh, a little better.” The poker for the small wood stove rotates slowly in the air. “But not much. This is what’s left of me. The Cure is losing its potency – I sense that, I’m sure of it – but I don’t know how much of my power I can get back, even though the potential has returned.” Erik’s eyes narrow at Charles. “How is it your powers have returned at full strength, even though you’re in a body without the mutant gene?”

“I’m not sure,” Charles admits, straightening himself from the pallet Moira fixed for him on the sofa. She gave him such a look when he first said he was all right to be left alone with Erik, but they need this time. “Near as Moira and I can figure, my powers are mostly in this body because my previous body put them there. As I rewrite the original inhabitant’s genetic code, the mutant gene will take over, and the powers will be … more at home, so to speak.”

“Be glad you don’t have to earn it all back, step by step. Because it’s hard work, and I’m not sure it can even be done.” Erik leans back in the chair, and once again Charles sees how weakened he is from his long journey. In his mad quest to save Charles from oblivion, Erik might well have died.

For a moment Charles remembers that swirling darkness in which he was lost – and the way he found Erik and clung to him as if nothing had ever divided them, or ever could. Now here they are, on opposite ends of a cold room, with Erik too mournful to meet his eyes.

“There must be a way to fully restore your abilities,” Charles says. “Your mutant gene has been reactivated. So there’s got to be some way to manage it.”

“Do let me know when you’ve gotten that figured out, will you? I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought of it during the two ghastly months I’ve spent working on it nearly every waking minute.”

“Now you’re just sulking.”

Erik looks as if he would like to argue this point, but he goes silent. The brittle carapace over his emotions suggests that he’d like to drop the subject for now.

But Charles can’t bring himself to let it go. Erik needs this as desperately as he needed food a few days ago, as desperately as Charles needed him, before.

Yes, he could wait a few days or hours. But he won’t. After months of inertia, Charles is wild to do something; Erik’s powers, or relative lack thereof, are most concretely defined of the many issues facing him now.

Charles died in a world where the X-Men were on the verge of public acceptance, where the Cure was considered permanent and yet purely optional, where no one had heard of the Reverend Matthew Risman outside a third-ranked cable Bible station, where Hank had risen to power in the government and where Erik remained fully Magneto.

Now everything has changed, almost none of it for the better.

As for Erik, the joy he felt when Charles awakened – the joy itself was what awakened him – that has faded into melancholy. It’s a phenomenon Charles understands well. They’ve had moments in the past when one had to rescue the other; they taught him how the relief and love of the initial reunion quickly fades into recognition of how far apart they are, and will always be.

But Charles reminds himself of what Erik said to him as he awakened: We’re here. In this place, this time, together. He refuses to waste it.

“Your control has always defined you,” Charles says, sliding his legs over the edge of the couch. “Why does it elude you now?”

Erik raises an eyebrow. He is still desperately thin, but he has decent clothing, a clean shave and food in his belly. It’s allowed him to reclaim some of his spark. “You have a theory, Charles. How many times do you intend to make me guess before you share your answer?”

“Lend me a hand, will you?” When Charles holds out his arm, Erik comes to his side, prepared to lift him up – but Charles finds he’s able to stand. For a moment, the sensation is marvelous; he’s never wasted much time on self-pity, but he’d be lying if said he’d never missed this. He attempts to take a step and sways hard against Erik’s side. “There’s a trick to it, isn’t there? I’d forgotten.”

Erik’s arm wraps around his waist as Charles leans against his shoulder. Neither of them shies back from the contact; neither of them makes any move to turn this into something other than it is. But their awareness of each other is so sharp, so great. Erik says, “Will this last? Unlike your hair.”

He took such pleasure in pointing out that thin spot yesterday. Charles sighs. “I suspect not. As my mental energy more fully reclaims this body, I will become more and more like I was at the moment of my death. The spinal injury seems likely to reassert itself at some point. But no reason not to enjoy this while it lasts.”

“And still you haven’t shared your theory.”

They walk across the room, half in each other’s arms. Charles can feel his sense of balance settling back over him; it will take a while for this body’s atrophied muscles to catch up, time he may not have, but it’s sort of nice just knowing he could get it back.

Charles says, “You thought your powers were lost to you. Now that they’re returning, you react to that very strongly. There’s – gratitude, relief, some degree of fear as well. I think it’s the extremity of your emotional response that keeps you from reasserting your old control.”

Erik doesn’t argue. “Difficult to calm one’s self about powers coming back until they’re already back.”

“A bit of a catch-22, I admit.” At the bedroom door, Charles feels steady enough to stand on his own, but he still folds his fingers in the crook of Erik’s elbow. Erik might be escorting him to dinner. “But I think we can do it. We worked together to make you stronger the first time; we’ll manage it again, if you let me help you.”

For a long moment, Erik says nothing; Charles can detect the chill of extreme shock. When Erik speaks, he says, “You want to help me regain my powers.”

“Of course.”

“No conditions, Charles?” The mockery in Erik’s tone doesn’t hide the tumult just beneath the surface. “No rules for you to set, no promises for me to keep? This is your chance to make me be a good boy, you know. Perhaps when you’re rummaging around in my mind, you’ll put some sort of a block in so that I can never take human life again.”

It’s not as if Charles has never considered such a thing; there were times when that damned helmet was the only barrier that kept him from doing it. But that was long ago, when Charles was more vulnerable to the illusion that such manipulation didn’t come at a cost.

He says, “Erik, I would no more put a price on helping you than you put a price on helping me. Aren’t we past that?”

Erik studies him, as intently and uncertainly as he did back in the first days they knew each other. They might as well be standing in Washington, D.C., Erik on the verge of walking away from the CIA and Charles forever. “You would give me back my power regardless of what I might do afterward. Regardless of how – how I have betrayed you.”

They’ve both betrayed each other at times, which Erik knows full well, and yet he remains suspicious. Good God, what is Erik planning now? But Charles’ answer doesn’t waver. “I intend to help you if I can. What comes afterward is up to you.”

After a short pause, Erik straightens. “You want to know what I’m thinking.”

“You’re wary.”

“You want more than that. Take it.”

The invitation is unexpected, and Charles isn’t at all sure what he’ll find. But as long as Erik is sharing freely, Charles wants to know. He breathes in, breathes out, and links his mind with Erik’s once more.

It’s not the fullest sharing possible, not what they used to have, but it’s a bridge, more than enough for them each to cross. Charles starts by revealing a memory of his own – what it was like to awaken from that horrific near-sleep, to hear Erik’s voice in his mind, to open his eyes and see that Erik was no dream. The gratitude – and yes, the love – warm from every second of it, and Charles is willing to lay it bare.

“Ah,” Erik says. There’s real surprise there; he didn’t think Charles would open up to him again.

After a long moment, Erik responds in kind.

The memory is of finding Charles in the strange psychic state that imprisoned him – the most intense of their encounters on that plane. Once again Charles lies in Erik’s arms; he feels the way they cling to each other and registers that Erik’s desperation is no less than his own. Erik was the only hope he had. Was he Erik’s only hope in turn?

Their recollections bend together, as the original moment did, into something they shared far later. Charles quails from it – perhaps the most painful memory he has.

When he was helpless under the power of William Stryker – when he was plugged into a duplicate Cerebro, his will tranquilized – Charles was programmed to seek and destroy every mutant on planet Earth. His power reached out, capable of strangling and crushing them all …

But Erik stopped it. Erik prevented the extermination of their race.

Then he did precisely what Stryker had done – used Charles’ helplessness to try to commit genocide. Only he ordered Charles to kill all of humanity, before touching him one last time, on his shoulder, and walking away, expecting Charles to die in the wake of the greatest crime ever perpetrated.

As they find themselves there once again – Charles in his chair, Erik garbed as Magneto, the duplicate Cerebro dark and hollow around them – Charles feels what is in Erik’s heart: remorse. Deep, true, complete and unequivocal remorse.

Charles gasps; the illusion shatters, and they are once again standing side by side in the ramshackle cabin. A combination of physical strain and emotional shock makes him sway on his feet.

“Here.” Quickly Erik settles him into the chair, then sits next to him. “Do you need anything? Water, perhaps.”

“Later. Erik – ”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t just sorry for what you did to me,” Charles says. “You’re sorry you tried at all. Your desire to eradicate humanity, or to rule it – that’s gone.”

Erik is no longer looking at Charles, or at anything in particular; his stare is distant, and while the years they’ve passed show on his face, the expression in his eyes is so like that of the younger man Charles first knew that he feels a lump rise in his throat. “I could never reconcile myself to what I did that day, but it was always about what I did to you. Or that was all I let myself think of. Not the greater implications. But when we were there – in your mind, and I relived it through you – ”

His hand seeks Charles’; he wants to share another experience psychically. Touch is unnecessary, of course, but it’s an old habit, one they both find useful. Though Charles still feels lightheaded, he can’t turn away. So he slips his fingers into Erik’s and reaches out once more.

They return to that other Cerebro, to that dark moment. Charles feels once again the depthless betrayal he knew when he first remembered this and fully understood what Erik had done – rawer than a third-degree burn, reaching right down to the core of him, a betrayal not just by the man he loved but also by a world that could allow this to happen –

\--and the light changes. He is standing in the heart of a concentration camp, in the office of Sebastian Shaw. He is – they are Erik. As Shaw laughs, and Erik’s rage fails to avenge his mother still lying dead in her own blood on the floor, that same betrayal wells up. The pain is very much the same. It’s not just that Mama has been killed, it’s not just that this monster thinks it’s funny; it’s that the world is capable of this kind of evil.

Charles pulls them out of it; surely Erik cannot bear any more of this.

“You’d be surprised,” Erik says, though his voice is shaky. “What I can bear.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t. True.” Erik rubs his temples; his eyes shut without breaking the connection between them. “You’ve told me before that I made myself in the shape the monsters that tormented me. And I told you I knew it, that I was willing to use whatever methods worked to protect our people. But only when I felt your betrayal, when I knew it was the same as mine, did I finally realize how close to being Shaw I had become. It’s the moment I knew I could never go back.”

It’s staggering – almost too much to take in. In some ways, he’s spent the past four decades of his life waiting for this; in others, Charles thinks he’s just been thrown into the realm of the impossible. He ought to be overjoyed. Instead, he can only gape at Erik like a beached fish.

“No gloating, Charles? I’d hardly blame you. Isn’t this the moment when you get to prove you were right about everything?”

“I wasn’t, and you know it.” His own regrets well up, mirroring Erik’s. “I counted on evolution to do the hard work for us. I counted on the passage of time to wear down humanity’s resistance. Like waves against rock, I thought. If I had worked harder to convince humans – if I had pushed more, come forward sooner, maybe a group like the Purifiers couldn’t exist. Maybe no one would ever have attempted to develop any Cure.” He breathes out heavily. “And throughout it all, I’ve been … too sure that my way was the only way. Not just in this. In everything.”

“Good points all,” Erik says dryly. “We both brought our people here, I suppose. But my betrayal was the last and the worst. That’s enough weight to carry.”

The silence between them, in this moment when they’re united in both their aims and their folly, is more terrible than any breach. The losses they’ve both suffered these past few decades – no. Charles won’t think about it any longer. If he does, they’ll both break down; they are each still recovering, in their ways, and they don’t need one more injury.

Charles folds Erik’s hand between both of his. “We’re not divided now. We’re safe. And now we need to make you strong again.”

Erik lifts one eyebrow, clearly doubtful but willing to humor Charles. “How shall we begin?”

“Bring the tinfoil closer.”

It comes winging toward them, not the steady glide Charles s accustomed to seeing in Erik’s powers, but haphazardly, as if caught on an unseen breeze. The sheet settles on the nearest table, roughly halfway between them.

“Maybe focus on precision first, before sheer force. Let’s give this a try,” Charles says. He knows Erik will understand that he’s suggesting the kind of connection they shared when they first started working together – where Charles would find moments of calm and steadiness within Erik’s mind, allowing him to work from that place.

Erik’s reaction is so muddled that Charles cannot tell whether he’ll say yes or not. Neither could Erik, probably. They’ve already shared deeply today, so much so that each of them is still reeling.

But at last Erik nods. Before they begin, though, he says, “Charles – ”

“Yes?”

“I hated thinking you were dead.”

Charles squeezes Erik’s hand; their gazes meet. For a moment, they might say or do anything – but then Charles says, “Close your eyes.”

Erik does. He can feel Erik’s concentration moving toward the tinfoil, curling around every molecule of metal, but too excited by even that small touch to concentrate.

A pleasant memory: Charles chooses one that has been stuck in his mind ever since he awoke, for some reason: The two of them lying on the floor of the study, Erik listening raptly as Charles read aloud from THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. That happened during the brief window of time in which they were madly in love but had not yet touched; they were still capable of being utterly moved by nothing more than lying side by side as they got lost in a story.

“We were such romantics, in our two ways,” Erik says.

“Weren’t we?”

The song fades. The vision slips away. Charles looks down to see Erik putting the final fold in the tinfoil to create a perfect origami crane.

“It’s coming back,” Erik says.


	18. Logan

Logan looks out on Alkali Lake and says, “I hate this place.”

“I know. Because Jean died here.” The wind catches at Marie’s hair as they stand together on the shore. “The first time, I mean.”

“That’s bad enough, but – not what I was talking about.” He glances over at her. “Because they did this to me here.” He holds out his hand, fingers curled under as if he were about to release his claws. She’ll understand.

Their eyes meet, tension thick in the chill air, before she simply nods and walks toward the others prepping the dive mission.

Logan exhales in frustration, hot breath fogging the frigid air. He sucks at all this talking-feelings bullshit, and it turns out Marie’s not tons better even though she’s a girl. They’ve only tacitly acknowledged what happened the night of Xavier’s awakening, as if it were nothing, even though the memory of her mouth on his has dominated his waking moments ever since. Hers too, he’d bet.

What kind of dick is he? She may not be a kid anymore – definitely not, if she kisses like that – but she’s still young. He’s anything but. Yeah, Marie made the move, but she’s done that before and he was able to control himself then. Why did he have to lose it like that? For a couple of minutes there, he was ready to drag her back to his cabin and spend the whole night teaching her everything about sex she wanted to learn.

And now that reminds him this community is made up of the remnants of a school. Does he count as a teacher? Does she still count as a student? Makes the whole thing sound like it’s ripped out of some cheapo tabloid, and that leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

Marie’s too good to be mixed up in anything like that.

Too good for him.

Best thing he can do for her is keep her at a distance, Logan tells himself. The more pissed off she is, the better he can do that. So he needs to get over seeing her in a bad mood.

He just can’t get used to hurting her like he does every time he pushes her away.

Impatiently, Logan pushes those worries to the back of his mind. They’ve got a job to do.

Reassembling Cerebro has been a project since the beginning, but they were taking it slow at first; the number of X-Men who can both dive that deep and survive that kind of cold is few, and with the Professor still out of it, there wasn’t much point in repeatedly risking exposure. Now, though, there’s a real sense of urgency. Time to finish the job.

He joins the group at the waterside, where Hank is coaching the team on what they need to do. “Storm, you’ll be able to part the waters for us, and Namor can work in the areas still submerged – ” Namor, who’s an alumnus or former teacher or something Logan hasn’t quite put together, nods and looks grumpy. “Colossus can help us there as well. And Aurora, Northstar, you can do the rest?”

Aurora says, “Supersonic, remember?” The silver-haired twins smile eagerly, shifting from foot to foot. They’re raring to go.

And so they collect the other Cerebro. It takes longer than any of them were hoping – Storm’s ability to part waves only lasts so long, and some pieces are so heavy that Northstar and Aurora can only bring them so far on their own. Colossus does the work of ten men, as does Hank, but the seconds drag on and on. They’re exposed in this place, and Logan feels like he can sense the minutes crawling by on his skin.

For his part, he can only help load the pieces on one of the trucks once they’re out of the lake. One thing about having an adamantium skeleton: You can’t swim for shit. If Logan falls in water, he sinks like a stone. The only way to deal with that is to grab a deep breath, drift down and then just walk out on the bottom of whatever water mass he’s fallen into. He gets to feel all the pain of suffocation without actually ever dying; it’s not fun. Yeah, he’s staying close to shore.

Marie drives one of the first trucks away. Against his better judgment, he holds up his hand in a farewell wave as she pulls out – no telling whether or not she sees.

They don’t get the last truck loaded until midnight. It’s just him, Colossus and Storm now. She has a heavy woolen cap covering her snowy hair.

“Keeping warm?” he says as he closes the back doors of the trailer.

“Disguising myself,” she replies. “My mutation keeps me warm regardless of exterior conditions. Though I never noticed that growing up in Cairo!”

It occurs to Logan that he’s never asked her about Cairo – and he likes traveling around, seeing new places, so that’s actually pretty interesting to him – but he doesn’t get the chance to ask before he hears a young man cry, “Repent!”

A dart pierces his skin at the throat – a terrible sting – but nothing nearly as bad as the weight that slams over his entire body as he falls hard to the ground. The first thought that goes through his head is _The motherfuckers were downwind._

Storm drops to her knees by his side, and maybe Colossus has the sense to stay in the truck for a minute. Logan hears the kids running off, one of them yelping, “Fuck, fuck, they weren’t mutants! You were wrong!”

“One of them was blue! And weird stuff was going on with the water! I saw it earlier!”

“You didn’t see shit! We just shot that guy, and we’re way over the border! Get out of here!”

They’re hurried on their way by a sudden gust of violent wind, provided by Storm. “Logan?” She pulls the dart from his skin and tosses it into the lake. “Are you okay?”

It hurts even moving his jaw to answer, “No.”

“The Cure – it shouldn’t do anything to you but make you human – ” Then her eyes widen as Colossus appears behind her shoulder, and Logan knows she’s glimpsed the truth.

He says it anyway, though, despite the pain: “Metal skeleton – weighs – 400 pounds. Can’t move.”

Without his strength, he’s dead weight.

**

Colossus manages to load him into the truck and out again, once they reach the town. Logan groans just from the heaviness of his lower legs and feet dangling from his knees as Colossus carries him into his house and settles him on the cot he calls a bed. Every tendon seems to be stretching at once, and he can’t heal the rips and tears any longer.

Within a few minutes, Professor Xavier and Moira MacTaggart are hovering over him. “Are you in any pain, Logan?” she asks.

“Not really,” Xavier answers for him, sparing Logan the ache of moving his jaw. That telepathy thing sure comes in handy sometimes. “Not while he remains still. But the weight of his rib cage and sternum are pressing down hard on his lungs.”

“They were a vigilante group,” Colossus says. “Purifiers. They must be searching for R.D.s up here. Thank God they found us at Alkali Lake instead of here. Unless -- do you think they will return?”

“Perhaps.” Xavier’s expression is grim. “But this is a large country, and we’re isolated. Plus they won't risk coming this far over the border often. But we should consider patrols.”

“Can you take a deep breath for me?” the doc asks Logan. He tries to oblige, but it’s tough sucking in more than a whisper of air. “Oh, dear. Any numbness or tingling?”

Xavier shakes his head. “Why?”

“The weight of the adamantium around Logan’s spinal cord has to be applying severe pressure.” MacTaggart brushes her hair out of her face. She’s scowling like she could frown that metal right out of his body. “It would be easy for him to be injured and paralyzed now. Even moving his head too quickly from one side to the other might do it. And without his healing capabilities – I don’t have to tell you what that would mean.”

The professor’s hand squeezes Logan’s. It would be nice to deny needing any comfort, but good luck playing brave with a telepath. Xavier says, “It appears the Cure is only temporary. Within a few months, even weeks, Logan will have thrown it off.”

Weeks? Months? Logan doesn’t feel like he can take another hour of this.

MacTaggart corrects the professor: “We _think_ the Cure is temporary. We don’t know for certain. Magneto may have received a reduced dose, or his body may have responded differently than other mutants’ would. Synthetic Cure may not have the same properties as the original organic compound. Logan, unfortunately, will have to test the question for us.” More quietly she adds, “He may not have months in any case. The body’s lymphatic system relis on bone marrow; only Logan’s healing mutation allows him to survive with his bones coated in adamantium. There’s also the question of metal toxicity. Essentially, we have to hope that the Cure wears off in less time than the adamantium would take to kill him.”

“Sucks to be me,” Logan manages to say, and the ache is almost worth it when that makes the doc smile.

“Logan?” Marie appears in the doorway, face stricken. “Oh, my God. Is he gonna be okay?”

“When the Cure wears off,” MacTaggart says. “If it wears off in time.”

Marie’s face whitens, but she doesn’t budge. “I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry. I can do it.”

“I don’t know that there’s much to do but keep him comfortable,” the doc says, suspecting nothing. Xavier, though – he glances from Marie back to Logan, and it’s obvious he has the whole picture. Logan expects a disapproving stare or a crisp suggestion that someone else do the nursing, but Xavier doesn’t deliver either. He simply nods, like he’s taking it in.

As Marie comes closer to Logan’s bed, she whispers, “What can I do?”

He manages to say, “Water.”

Within five minutes, Marie’s got him a glass of water complete with bendy straw so he can drink. Where the hell did she find a bendy straw up here? Xavier’s pulled MacTaggart away to “consult,” which gives them a moment alone.

As Logan gratefully sips some water, Marie says, “Is it bad?”

“Head hurts.” It’s a dull headache, not so awful as these things go, but there’s something about knowing your body can’t even take the weight of your skull. Throws you off.

“We’ll take care of you. You know that, right?”

She means bathing him, feeding him, helping him take a leak. Logan hates just thinking about it. “Never wanted – to – bring you down.”

“What?” Marie shakes her head; a loose lock of white hair in the front sways back and forth. She gets that stubborn little look on her face that always bowls him over. “Something like this can happen to anybody. Doesn’t mean the people who care about them should run off.”

He’s not sure he agrees that Marie shouldn’t run off as far and fast as she can, but Logan’s too tired to argue.

When there’s nothing else MacTaggart can think of to do for him, and Xavier tells him to call him mentally if anything goes wrong, they’re left alone for good. Exhausted, Logan drops off to sleep in about three minutes.

By the time he awakens, it must be the dead of night. The only light comes from a lantern Marie’s got burning on a nearby table. She’s sitting beside him, clearly dog-tired, but she hasn’t budged an inch. Guilt and adoration mingle inside him, inseparable.

“How are you feeling?” she whispers, brushing her fingers over his forehead.

“Like hell.”

Marie shakes her head. “I spent most of the last couple of weeks wishing whatever happened to Magneto was a fluke. Now – now I hope it’s for real.” Her lower lip trembles. “I’d rather have my mutation back than see you stuck like this for good.”

There’s nothing she could say that means more than that. If he could sit up right now, he’d take her in his arms and kiss her. Of course, that would only make him a bigger dog than he already is, so it’s just as well he can’t.

But at least he’d be giving her something. Holding back – has it spared her a thing? Because Logan’s pretty sure she’s in love with him now, and all she’s getting for it is nursemaid duty and a broken heart.

Maybe his love, too, but Logan’s not going there tonight, not even in his head.

Instead he says something he’s been thinking about since maybe two minutes after Colossus loaded him into the truck. “Guess right now – I could – die.”

She jerks upright. “What?”

“Can’t die,” Logan says. This talking makes his jawbone feel like it’s going to sink through his flesh, rip its way down to the bottom. Even his teeth hurt. “Sometimes wonder – if I’d be here – after the sun burns out.”

Her hand covers her mouth. There’s still something surprising, almost tantalizing, about seeing her bare palm and fingers without the gloves she used to wear. “I never thought about that. Oh, my God. Logan, do you freak out about never being able to die?”

“Try not to.” He swallows hard. “But sometimes.”

“Well, you’re not dying tonight.” Marie puts her hands on either side of his head, like she’d have to hold him still at this point. “Because I’d have to be the one killing you, and I won’t. Don’t you dare ask me to.”

Logan wouldn’t mind taking this opportunity to check out permanently. He’s in no rush to die, but if this were his one shot, he wouldn’t waste it. And he’d damn sure rather go fast than slow, by metal poisoning or lymphatic system failure or whatever the hell else the adamantium around his bones means for his human body. Yet if dying fast means asking Marie to do it, even know about it, then the chance just has to go on by. If this crap doesn’t wear off and the Cure turns out to be permanent for most mutants, he’ll figure something out with Xavier, some way for him to die while Marie’s somewhere else. “Okay.”

Maybe, if this wears off, he can get hold of some Cure, hang on to it for a rainy day.

Logan’s tired enough to doze off again. When he awakens, Marie’s asleep next to him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. His arm is slightly numb. Neither of those seem as urgent as the fact that he’s breathing easier.

A lot easier.

He sucks in a deep breath, and he can do it. Tingling spreads through his body in a building wave – what really awoke him, he realizes – and his skeleton doesn’t feel as heavy any longer. His first thought is that the adamantium is gone, and damned if he can explain how he’s horrified and overjoyed at once, but that’s the shape of it.

But then Logan realizes his metal skeleton is intact, but he can bear it again.

“Marie,” he says, tilting her slightly off his shoulder as she murmurs her way into consciousness. Logan sits up to look down at her. As she stares, he says, “It’s over.”

“Already?” Marie props herself up beside him. “But – you got hit yesterday!”

“And it’s gone.”

Dr. MacTaggart turns out not to mind being woken up at dawn to deal with something interesting. As Xavier, Marie, Magneto and Hank watch intently, she checks him out from head to toe.

“Perhaps the synthetic Cure isn’t as potent,” Magneto suggests. How this guy got back on the executive committee so fast, Logan doesn’t know, but he figures he can bring that up with the Professor later.

“Possibly,” the doc says, “but if it only worked for a day or so on most mutants, humanity would be well aware of that by now. My guess is that this is less about the synthetic Cure itself and more about the Cure’s limitations. Probably it begins wearing off briefly after application, but most mutants require months to feel any real effect. Logan, however, is different. The very nature of his mutation means that he quickly throws off the impact of drugs, infectious agents, and so on. As soon as the smallest fraction of his ability reasserted itself, his body repudiated the Cure completely.”

Logan doesn’t flinch as MacTaggart starts drawing her blood samples. Instead he looks at Marie, who never turns toward him. He knows what she’s feeling as surely as he knows anything in this world.

Her prison is returning to close her back in. She’s got a big decision looming, and he’s lost the right to help her make it.


	19. Erik

How courteous of them to have chosen a hideout so close to an old iron mine. Erik has always felt his best near the ferromagnetic metals.

He begins this morning as he has most days during his month in their tiny outpost: strolling down to the mouth of the mine and then walking inside, deeper and deeper, until the shafts encircle and embrace him. Although most of the iron has been ripped out of the earth, the slivers and threads that remain are more than enough to provide the comfort Erik needs.

The molecular structure seems to ripple along his skin, to perfume the air, to melt upon his tongue. Of course the sensory experience of it is not like mere human senses, but those provide the only language Erik has to describe the experience. He holds out his arms, allowing it to sweep through and over him, and he feels safer than he has in years.

Maybe that’s just having regular meals again.

Maybe it’s the way his powers are returning, exponentially, day by day.

Or maybe it’s waking up and going to sleep in the same house as Charles.

All of the above, most likely.

“You should have come to me.”

Erik opens his eyes. He knows the voice, of course, but he’s still glad of the small flashlight that allows him to see her.

Mystique stands in the shaft behind him, outlined by the last glimmers of daylight from the world above. She looks so wholly unlike herself – and not only due to the loss of her mutation. The shapeless, outdoorsy clothes she wears, the lusterless eyes: None of that has anything to do with the essence of this woman, his enduring ally.

The one he abandoned when she needed him most.

“Yes,” he says. “I should have. But it’s difficult. I’m ashamed of myself, you see.”

She nods. Erik remembers her as she was when she was a girl – devoted, almost worshipful, and after the break with Charles and his dreams, he’d needed that. At that point in their lives, Mystique was … amorphous. In every sense of the word. Because he didn’t want to shape her physical body to his needs, neither of them ever asked how he shaped her soul. Probably it’s better never to know.

He ventures, “You’re calmer now.”

“Sorry I hit you,” Mystique says. She isn’t sorry and they both know it, but her desire to rebuild bridges is sincere. Then something akin to real regret creeps into her voice. “I’ve been ashamed too.”

“Why?”

“I went to them.” Her voice is small. “The human authorities. I let them call me by my slave name. I told them everything I knew about the Brotherhood. They laughed at me like I was – like I was an angry ex-girlfriend. And still I thought – ”

“You thought you would be kept safe.” Erik understood this all along. “They’d hurt you, hadn’t they, my dear?”

Mystique nods, and anger flickers within her odd human gaze – the first hint of the real Mystique, the woman he has known and cherished for so many years. “I was half insane when you found me.”

He had sensed that instability within her, and he’d allowed it to play upon his own fears of what it would mean to be turned human again. The first reports of the Cure had awakened such sickening terror within him. Erik had been ruled by that terror for weeks. He’d convinced himself that ceasing to be a mutant meant … ceasing to be. It had been easier to look down at the naked, weeping form of the human Mystique and tell himself that she had nothing to do with him. That his old ally was dead. That the best thing to do was walk away. In her place he would have expected the same; he’d had to be in her place before he’d learned better.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Sorrier than you can ever know.”

She doesn’t accept that apology, but she doesn’t refuse it either. He thinks perhaps they have to get used to standing together again.

Finally Mystique says, “How did you get your powers back?”

That’s still a work in progress, but he knows she’s not talking about the search for enhancement and refinement that he and Charles have undertaken together. She’s talking about that first breakthrough – the moment between no and yes.

“I kept looking for them.” This seems like an inadequate answer, but there are no words for it. “Reach out. Keep reaching. The way you did when you first learned to control your powers.”

“It wasn’t something I had to learn.” She breathes out in frustration. “I could always do it perfectly. Always.”

Her stubbornness reminds him of the girl she was so long ago, attempting to seduce him by simply showing up naked in his room one day. They’ve shared a bed many times since – Mystique is the person he’s made love to more often than any other – but it was never a matter of romantic love between them, sometimes not even a matter of desire. It was about a bond between them, one born of deep convictions that meant more to them than anything else. He’d needed someone to share those beliefs worse than he’d ever realized; Mystique gave him that, the one thing Charles never could.

“Then remember how you felt when you changed form,” Erik says gently. “Whatever sensations it awakened on your skin. The way you would choose the shape you wanted to take. Get back in touch with that. Try. Keep trying even when you fail. It took me weeks to do more than bend a spoon.” They regard each other in silence for a long moment before he dares offer, “I could work with you. If you’d like.”

“I would.”

Erik bows his head slightly, accepting this as more forgiveness than he’d expected. “Was there no one else to help you?” It’s all right to put his hand on her shoulder now. “Would no one in the Brotherhood listen?”

“I didn’t try. Besides, you know they wouldn’t have.”

It’s true. He taught them that humanity was despicable and threatening. The ones who didn’t believe him have by and large already returned to humanity; the ones who did would have had no patience for a human Mystique. “Is it true that Pyro’s in charge now?”

“Yes. They must’ve been hard up.” They share amused glances.

Pyro. That hothead. Erik hasn’t seen a newspaper or website since a few days before he found Charles again, but he can imagine. He dreams of Pyro and the Purifiers meeting in a grand battle that destroys them all, thus sparing everyone else considerable trouble, but doubts they’ll be so lucky.

“When we lost everything, we both knew what to do,” Mystique continues. “We both went straight home.”

Everything that’s tragic and glorious about the past four decades of his life can be summed up as simply as that, Erik thinks: His home is still wherever Charles is.

**

Charles stands on the metal framework they’re constructing for Cerebro, wire cutters in hand. “I’m glad Raven’s talking to you. Maybe she’ll even start spending time with me again.”

“Maybe,” Erik says gravely. “We live in an age of marvels.”

This wins him a wry grin, but it lasts only for a moment. They have a job to do.

Although they haven’t yet agreed on how best to use Cerebro once it’s rebuilt, the importance of having it back in their arsenal is obvious. Charles’ reach will be expanded almost past imagining, as will his power. The only question is how best to use it.

As Erik smoothes the damaged edge of one metal plate, rippling the molecules back into order, he says, “Do you intend to let the Purifiers continue on their rampages?”

“If you mean, do I intend to let them continue unopposed? No. Nor does the American public, if news and polls are to be believed; the Purifiers’ turn toward violence has made it clear even to humanity how ugly they are. If you want me to climb in their heads and change their opinions, however – ”

“I would scarcely dream of your being so efficient.”

Charles raises a brow. “So what’s your idea, Erik?”

“It is your turn to shoot me down, I admit.”

“I’m not going to shoot you down,” says Charles as he works with the screwdriver. His voice echoes slightly in the vast empty chamber they’re using for Cerebro, formerly some sort of metal-processing area, which has a pleasant whiff of ore about it still. “Let me hear your thoughts. I genuinely want to know.”

Erik has to consider this, which Charles no doubt predicted. They work together in silence for a while as Erik thinks things through.

Even if Charles could be convinced to change the Purifiers’ minds, that would be a bad plan. The rapid about-face of the entirety of a well-publicized political movement would come across as highly suspicious to any outside observer. It’s known that many mutants are psychics, and some in the U.S. government have ideas of the enormity of Charles’ power. Such brainwashing would only alienate the humans who do not fear and loathe them already, undoing the modest gains they’ve seen since the Purifiers’ turn toward homicide. It might awaken even more violent reprisals.

Longer-term, more subtle change: Charles might be capable of that with any one person, but with a large group forever reinforcing each other’s prejudices, it’s nearly impossible.

Then what can he, or Charles, or the X-Men possibly do? At first Erik believed them cowardly for running to a literal hole in the ground, but now he thinks acting to preserve some fragment of their race might have been the only possible first move in this terrible chess game they now must play.

But if they do nothing, they will be the only survivors – increasingly embattled, increasingly endangered.

The humans will line up their mutant children at the clinics for regular doses of the Cure, as they would for dialysis. The shots will be sold in chain drugstores, as though they were insulin. There will always be outliers, rebels, those who choose to claim their identity and their strength. But, as ever in human history, such brave souls will remain a minority. Checkmate.

“Not ‘as ever.’” In the midst of a good discussion, or bad argument, Charles abandons all pretense of not overhearing strongly defined thoughts. “The civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights – you did notice that humanity hasn’t remained socially static in our lifetime?”

The other identities that could claim him have always made Erik uneasy. He chose to think of himself as a mutant first – as a mutant only – many decades ago. It’s beside the point now, anyway.

“Sanctuary was the proper beginning,” Erik says. “Once we’ve rebuilt Cerebro, you could summon our kind here. When we have greater numbers, we will have greater power.”

“Greater power, which we use to what end? ” As he runs one hand along Cerebro’s frame, Charles adds, “We’ve been working on combat tactics against the Purifiers. There’s even talk of a Cured brigade – ”

“A what?”

“The main weapon the Purifiers have against us is the Cure,” Charles explains. “Some people whose powers are less useful in combat – Kitty, Volt – they’ve suggested that they form the front line. They accept that they’ll be hit. They’ll be Cured. And then they’ll fight like any human troops would, forming a line of defense for those with other mutations that can be used more readily.”

Even now, with his powers fast returning and the knowledge that the Cure is only temporary, Erik can hardly imagine volunteering to go through it. And yet – it makes sense. To protect their rights to live as mutants, some will sacrifice their identity as mutants. It’s the one sacrifice Erik’s not sure he could have made in their place.

However courageous the idea, though, it doesn’t solve their core difficulty. “The Purifiers are small bands of militia. A fringe movement. A front line without powers won’t defend us against an army.”

This is Charles’ cue to protest that no armies will be sent against them, but he surprises Erik by saying, “I’ve thought of that. Concentrating on moving against the Purifiers – against the most immediate risks to our people – that must be our first step. But you’re right. We’ll need a broader strategy long term.”

Erik puts one hand on the framework as he considers the alternative. His wrist is a few inches from Charles’ foot; Charles is taking advantage of his newfound strength, clambering up high. “We could move against the Cure’s centers of production.”

Charles’ tongue worries the corner of his mouth as he tests the steadiness of the latest plate. “In China, you mean.”

“The Blackbird should be capable of slipping through even Chinese defenses. It could be accomplished with no loss of life, if done correctly. You wouldn’t object to convincing the manufacturing staffs to flee?”

“No. That would be reasonable. But the formula would still exist – ”

“Surely it’s tightly guarded,” Erik suggests. “They’re in no hurry to give up that secret. This would be half combat mission, half corporate espionage. We could eradicate the physical evidence of the Cure’s formula, once we tracked it down – and you could erase the knowledge of it from the scientists’ minds.”

This much, Erik expects to see rejected immediately … but it isn’t. Charles leans against the metal framework, more uncertain than Erik has seen him in many years. It’s the most terrifying thing about Charles, really – the way he really, truly thinks through each vast use of his powers, weighs the morality of it in-depth, and sometimes still goes too far. “Yes. I could muddy the details. But I don’t think the Cure should cease to exist.”

Erik stares. “As long as it exists, our survival is at stake.”

“And yet there are mutants who genuinely need it. Think of some of the cases we saw, Erik. You must have encountered others on your own; certainly I have. Evolution travels down many blind alleys, and the people condemned to live in those alleys – the Cure should be available for them. We have the right to choose our own destinies, even when those choices aren’t the ones you or I would make.”

As much as Erik would like to embrace mutation as an all-encompassing good, he knows Charles is right about evolution’s wrong turns. Rogue’s adolescent need for romance may have outweighed her embrace of her fascinating power, but hers is a marginal case. Other mutants are far from the margin. He has seen people who age so quickly that they progress from infancy to senility within a few months. People grotesquely and uncomfortably deformed with no powers as compensation. People mutated to be more vulnerable to disease, not less – people whose only power is sensory sensitivity enhanced until any sound, touch or even smell causes horrible pain. And those are the mutants strong enough to be born and who survive to be found; countless more must die in utero or in early infancy.

He levitates another plate for Charles to work on as he considers. Would he condemn these unfortunates so the rest can survive more easily? Formerly, Erik thinks, he might have. That’s how he used to think.

How Shaw used to think.

But Erik now believes he has, at long last, given enough of his mind and his life to Sebastian Shaw. No more.

“You’re right,” Erik says. “It could exist for those few whose need is real. But we cannot be at the mercy of it. And how are we to avoid that?”

Charles looks down at him half in wonder; is it that surprising to him that Erik would show sympathy? But the rest of the idea occurs to him almost before Charles speaks: “Erik, if we took over the only production – Hank could reproduce the formula … that would be the ultimate power play. Mutants alone in control of the mutant Cure? It works. By making it available to those few in genuine need, we show humanity that we’re not reactionary.”

The enthusiasm is contagious. “And refusing to give it to governments or to the public at large – including groups such as the Purifiers – allows us to protect our race.”

“We would be able to govern our own community. Mutants who use their powers for criminal behavior – we can stop them without risking human lives, or those of other mutants.”

It would be pleasant to shut Pyro down. “The ability to police our people more effectively than the civic authorities would force governments to recognize us. To deal with us straightforwardly. Self-governance is where statehood begins.”

“We’d have leverage we could use to ensure legal equality. And we could continue to shut down any future sources of Cure that China or anyone else attempted to build.”

“This will be complicated,” Erik warns, but his enthusiasm is rising as surely as Charles’. “Tracing the Cure formula’s distribution within China … ”

“Kitty’s a marvelous programmer and hacker, and one of the students here is a young man who can see into computer networks. With Cypher’s help … ” Charles’ hand runs along one of the metal tubes surrounding the sphere that will be Cerebro, and he pats it as fondly as he did that convertible they had back in 1962. “We can do this. It won’t be easy or simple, and doing more than shutting down Chinese distribution will take a long time – but we can do it.”

They’re grinning at each other like loons. It’s as close to a solution as they’re ever likely to find, but half the joy is in how they’ve found it.

Softly, a teasing smile on his face, Charles says, “I think I’m getting through to you.”

“I believe I’m the one who’s gotten through to you. Charles Xavier, down in the dirt with the rest of the footsoldiers – we live in the age of miracles.”

“As if I never got my hands dirty. I finance and train a paramilitary force, you know. Why do you insist on seeing me as such a …” He seeks the right term and comes up with one Erik would never have predicted: “… goody two shoes?”

Startled into a laugh, Erik says, “Hardly that.” He remembers the night Charles brought out the blindfold.

Then it hits him what they’ve just learned: They need each other.

Always, they needed each other. All those decades spent struggling, fighting separate battles against the world that rejected them, fighting each other very nearly to the death – all time spent fighting what they needed most.

The despair of it settles over him, heavy, dank and blinding. It’s sorrow as acute physical anguish, and even as Erik feels it, he sees Charles leaning closer in concern. “Erik? What’s wrong?”

He struggles for words that won’t come, until the silence is shattered by an explosion.


	20. Hank

There’s no warning, no sense that anything is wrong, until the force slams into Hank’s cabin, very nearly tearing it apart.

His reflexes are as fast as his mind; even as he twists his body to take the brunt of his impact against the wall on his broad, muscular feet, he thinks, _This isn’t the Canadian government – they have no motive. No other military force either, because they wouldn’t attack on Canadian soil. These aren’t the Purifiers; they don’t have the military might._

 _This can only be the Brotherhood._

He shakes splinters from his fur as he bursts out of the remnants of his temporary home. In the snow, cover on fire, is his prized copy of ANNA KARENINA. Growling, Hank bounds across the wreckage toward the apparent nexus of the attack.

The fire came from Pyro, who has perhaps a dozen mutants with him – but those mutants include Sabretooth, Juggernaut, Warpath and other powerful members of the Brotherhood. Pyro seems to be torching structures almost at random, blowing them up to draw people out – and, of course, to watch them burn.

“What the fuck are you doing?” yells Bobby as he runs toward Pyro, still a boy confronting a wayward friend instead of one enemy going into war against the other.

“We came looking for Cerebro.” Pyro directs his hands toward Bobby, though no flame flashes yet. “Maybe one of our telepaths could use it. But you guys stole it, and now we want it.”

“You couldn’t use it!” protests Kitty, who’s only a few steps behind her boyfriend. “And you wouldn’t even know how to rebuild it!”

“Well, well,” says Juggernaut. His grin is repulsive. “If it’s not the little bitch who likes to play tricks. Think I’ll play a few of my own.”

Pyro nods toward Kitty. “Teach her a lesson, Juggernaut.”

“No!” Bobby turns from Pyro – no doubt just as Pyro intended – to protect Kitty, whose phasing ability can only help her so much here in the isolated woods. Even as Juggernaut hurtles toward her, though, Hank leaps through the air and smashes into his chest. It doesn’t slow Juggernaut down much – it wouldn’t – but as Hank gasps for the breath that’s just been knocked out of him, he hopes they see they’re up against the X-Men here, in force.

The clouds overhead darken and thicken so quickly that Hank knows Ororo is preparing to bring lightning down. Logan appears, and he and Sabretooth square off, clearly ready to draw blood. A few of the children are running in various directions, screaming and sobbing; Colossus is wisely trying to corral them before flinging himself into combat. Of all people, it’s Marie who dashes forward to confront Pyro. “Call him off! Don’t hurt Kitty!”

Her hand closes around Pyro’s, and Pyro flinches; he doesn’t know about Marie’s Cure, Hank realizes, and for a moment she herself must have forgotten. When Pyro stares down, understanding beginning to dawn, she goes for the more direct approach and punches Pyro in the nose so hard that he topples backward into the snow.

He bounds up again in an instant. “You’ll pay for that – ”

“Well, well, well.” Erik – no, Magneto strolls into the clearing as casually as if he were coming down to dinner. The entire Brotherhood is shocked into stillness; whatever they expected to find here, they didn’t expect him. “Still acting before thinking, Pyro. Disappointing.”

“Magneto.” Sabretooth never glances away from Logan for long, but his attention is now divided. For his part, Logan is edging toward Marie, more worried about what Pyro might do to her than about his old enemy. “What are you doing here?”

“Making constructive plans. Unlike you lot, I see. That attack you attempted in Chicago – did that have any political purpose, or were you just causing trouble? If we judge by your ridiculous vandalism in Washington, I think we have the answer.”

Pyro is clearly caught off-guard. His authority over the Brotherhood must be shadow-thin; Magneto’s reappearance, even in an ordinary winter coat, has been enough to confuse the entire group. The X-Men, for their part, are equally quiet. Although the clouds roil overhead, Ororo holds the winds and thunderbolts in check – for the moment. Finally Pyro says, voice dripping with contempt, “You’re nothing now. You’ve been Cured. You’re just a human.”

Magneto responds by sending a metal lantern sailing through the air toward Pyro’s head. Pyro manages to duck just in time, but the point has been made.

“As I have said,” Magneto continues, “We’ve been making plans. Would you like to hear them, or would you rather pick fights?”

Interesting that Magneto didn’t clearly explain that the Cure’s effect is only temporary. Hank realizes that he’s weighing the Brotherhood’s trustworthiness, keeping his best weapons in check. As he watches Magneto take another step forward, he realizes how much of this is a gamble – how much Magneto is relying on posture and voice to communicate authority, how slender his power is compared to the force arrayed in front of him. Behind that confident, unhurried façade is a man who recently stumbled out of the woods nearly starved to death. His courage hasn’t faltered.

It has been years since Hank allowed himself to remember how much he used to admire Mr. Lehnsherr, his teacher, the survivor of the Holocaust, the man so wholly proud of his mutation that it gave the rest of them fortitude. He remembers it now, and it feels like being given back a piece of his boyhood. A piece of himself.

“Making plans?” Pyro manages to respond. “You and who? These jerks? Bobby? Kitty? The X-Men are just up here hiding while the world goes to hell!”

“I believe Erik specifically meant me,” Professor Xavier says, stepping into the clearing, every bit as calm as Magneto. With a knit cap over his remaining hair, he looks not that much different than the Professor they would have known. The Brotherhood appears sufficiently startled by his resurrection. “Though of course we intend to work together as a team. That includes all the X-Men, and perhaps some of you as well, if you’re willing.”

“They said you were dead,” Sabretooth growls.

“I was.” The professor offers no further explanation.

Raven emerges from the shadows of the trees to stand just behind Magneto, as she so often has the past several decades. Though she doesn’t drape herself across his shoulder in her usual fashion, she nonetheless wears the same smile on her face. She knows as well as he does what Magneto is trying to do, and she knows just how to help do it.

Warpath steps forward then and says, “Let’s hear this plan.”

To Hank’s astonishment, the Professor immediately answers, “We intend to shut down Chinese production of the Cure, retaining the formula as necessary, but keeping it out of the hands of humankind from now on.”

Most of the X-Men try very hard not to look surprised. Hank doesn’t bother; he’s too excited by the possibilities, which turn and click through the quick gears of his mind almost instantly. “You are suggesting industrial espionage as political revolution. I for one like the concept.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Pyro isn’t bothering to think this over; he’s too bewildered by the turn of events and the almost instant loss of status he experienced the moment Magneto showed himself. “Whose plan is this? Stealing formulas? Sounds like Xavier’s.”

“We developed it together,” Magneto says, and there’s something very familiar about the way he and Xavier glance at one another.

Too familiar, perhaps, but that’s a complication to consider another day –

“Together?” Juggernaut demands, belligerent as ever. “Since when do you two make plans together?”

It’s Raven who answers. “Since the beginning. They just stopped for a while.”

She and Xavier look at one another then, and for an instant, it’s there – the old easiness and humor, the love of a brother and a sister for each other. Raven turns her head after mere seconds, breaking the connection, but Hank wonders if it’s truly possible for all their old wounds to heal in time.

So he steps forward. “Fighting each other has always been a waste of our resources.” Hank so rarely gets to use his booming voice, but he lets it ring forth now, the way he used to when he addressed Congress. “We began as mutants united in common cause. We’ve let ourselves forget that the true enemies are ignorance and prejudice. If we come together again – if we find the unity we ought to have had all along – we have a chance to reverse our fates. Mutants can again take charge of our own destinies. Our evolution can continue.”

“Or we can waste yet more time,” Magneto adds as he comes even closer to Pyro, using the inches of height he has over him. “It’s your choice. Either join us – and help undo the needless damage you’ve done here today – or leave us in peace.” A flicker of the old menace returns to Magneto’s voice. “Opposition would be unwise.”

Sabretooth glares at Logan before stalking into the woods – without the Brotherhood or anyone. To him, apparently, the only consideration is whether or not he would deign to work with Logan for any purpose, and he wouldn’t. To judge by the snarl on Logan’s face, the feeling is mutual.

But Warpath comes forward, nodding slowly. “I want to hear more about how we’re supposed to stop other people from making the Cure, but – this is the best idea anyone’s come up with.”

Pyro shoots him a look of utter disgust. He marches toward whatever transport they used to get here; clearly the idea is that the others will follow. Several do (Juggernaut among them, to Hank’s great relief). Yet Warpath is not the only one who remains; four others from the Brotherhood stay as well.

“We’re just letting them walk away?” Logan demands. “After a stunt like that?”

“We are today,” the Professor says. “Not again.”

Unity before vengeance: It’s easy to say, more difficult to embrace. The time will come for a reckoning with Pyro and his ilk – but for now, they have more constructive things to do.

In the aftermath of cleaning up and checking for injuries, as Ororo and Xavier form a kind of welcoming committee – or screening committee – for the Brotherhood members who have joined them, Beast draws closer to Raven. “Well done.”

“We can start over,” Raven says. As simple as the words are, she sounds more like an adult woman – someone strong, not broken – than she has since her arrival at the mansion months ago. “We can do it all the way we should have done it the first time.”

“Precisely.” Beast puts his arm around her, just as he would have when they were teenagers at school; she hugs him around his waist, unselfconscious and at ease. A few of the students stare, but let them look. Hopefully they’ll have to get used to seeing X-Men and Brotherhood members being friends again.

It never occurs to him to ask whether he and Raven agree on how it should have been done the first time.


	21. Marie

_I forgot,_ Marie thinks. _I just … forgot._

A chill runs through her that goes deeper than the winter cold, and the feeling in her belly is like seasickness. The horror isn’t that she forgot; it’s that she wanted to forget.

“Rogue!” Kitty calls, and Marie turns her head before remembering to object to her mutant name. She needs the distraction.

“Hey, are you okay?” Marie knows full well that Juggernaut didn’t lay a finger on Kitty, but still, his lingering hatred for her was unnerving to witness.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kitty pushes loose strands of her dark hair back from her face. “I just wanted to say – thanks for going after Pyro like that. It would’ve been pretty kick-ass even if you did have your power. Without it?” A sly smile appears on Kitty’s face. “You’ve got big brass ones that clank together when you walk, girl.”

Marie can’t help smiling, and it’s a relief not to be angry at Kitty any more. It’s not like she and Bobby ran around behind Marie’s back or anything; maybe they all could be friends again. Nothing would ever be quite as easy as before, but Marie’s missed hanging out with them. Kitty’s wicked sense of humor, Bobby’s sweet temper: She could use a little more of that in her life.

But even this doesn’t drown out the tiny voice in her head repeating, over and over, _I forgot. I forgot. I forgot._

Worse than that: She was on the verge of remembering. Remembering how to find her power. That poisonous skin she thought she’d shed – for a moment, she felt it far beneath the surface.

But no. Marie understands instinctively that she’d have to reach for it – fight for it – and she’s nowhere near that yet.

“We lost part of our roof,” Kitty says. “Gotta find another place.”

Wrinkling her nose in sympathy, Marie says, “Most of the leftover places suck.”

“And Beast’s shack totally bought it. Maybe we should let him have a good one.”

“Beast’s gotten to where he likes camping out in the snow. He’s gonna buy himself a duck blind and an antler rack any day now. I say you guys should go get a jump on it.”

“Okay.” Kitty grins. “See you around?”

“Yeah. See you.” She waves as Kitty runs through the snow (literally) toward Bobby, who awkwardly waves back.

Marie knows she should check out her own little house, but it’s as if chatting pleasantly with Kitty took the last of the strength out of her. She puts one hand against the trunk of the nearest tree and sucks in a few sharp breaths. The cold doesn’t steady her as much as she’d hoped.

Just as she realizes how dark the sky is getting, she hears a voice behind her: “You went after Pyro.”

“Yeah.” Marie glances over her shoulder at Logan for only a moment. Being near him was easier when she could still be mad at him; her anger served as a shield. Now his presence is raw for her, but she still craves him being near. “Kitty said I had – she said I was bad-ass for doing it.” Her vocabulary isn’t quite as earthy as Kitty’s yet.

“You are.” Logan steps to her side. “But I meant, you went after him with your power.”

She groans. “Logan … I actually forgot. For, like, a tenth of a second, I forgot I didn’t have it anymore. Is that gonna be how it comes back, when it does?” Not if. When.

He leans against a nearby tree, studying her. His coat hangs open, as does his plaid shirt unbuttoned over a white T-shirt. His boots are almost buried in the snow. Marie can hardly see his face for the shadows as he says, “When you did that, I thought you must’ve thrown off the Cure. Beat it back like Magneto, so you could help Kitty.”

Magneto – since when does he get to make plans with Professor X? Why haven’t they thrown him out yet? But that’s a whole other situation for her to worry about, much farther away than her own skin.

She looks down at her bare hand, still red and stiff with cold. The gloves are still stuffed in her coat pockets. “Maybe that’s how it’s going to happen. Maybe someday I’ll need the power so badly that the Cure will just vanish.”

“Do you feel any signs yet?”

“Not really. What did you feel, Logan?”

“Prickling. Energy. One big rush.”

“It was different for you than Magneto, though. Probably it’s different for everybody.” Marie hates not knowing how long she’s got or what she’ll choose when the time comes. All she knows is that today she wanted her power back, and once she would have sworn that was impossible.

A tremor goes through her, and suddenly Logan’s there, right next to her. “Hey. You okay?”

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” she whispers. “All I know is, either way, I have to give something up. I know that’s just life. But I hate it all the same.”

Logan thinks that over for a few seconds, studying her so intently that she can’t help feeling slightly bashful. She knows he’s never going to kiss her again, has told herself that a thousand times, but it hasn’t made her stop wishing he would. And right now it feels like that’s about the only thing that could blot out the fear she feels every time her mind repeats the words _I forgot._

Then he sniffs the air, which kind of breaks the mood. After a few seconds, he nods, like he’s figured something out. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Not far.”

They head to the vehicles. Logan tosses her a helmet as they walk toward the cycle. She hops on behind him, and there’s an excuse to wrap her arms around his waist and rest her head against his back. He guns the motor, deep vibration rippling up through her, and they take off. It’s a treacherous path, rocky and steep, along the high hill; despite the terrible windy weather, Marie knows the only reason he takes it slow is concern for her.

Once they’re on the high ridge, only about half a mile away, Logan stops the bike. It’s even quieter here, even darker. No trees survive on the barren ridge, so there’s nothing between them and the sky. The stars are brilliant overhead. “Did you bring me up here to look for constellations?” she says as she nestles her helmet on the back of the bike.

“Close but not quite.” Logan sniffs the air again. “Any second now.”

“What?”

“It smells kind of like ozone, when it’s about to start.”

“What are you – ” Marie’s eyes go wide. “Oh.”

The sky overhead brightens almost imperceptibly before it ripples with color – pale green shifting into pink, the strangest and most unearthly illumination she’s ever seen. At first it’s more like a special effect from a movie than anything Marie ever imagined glimpsing in the real world, but then she realizes what this is, something she’s heard about but never witnessed. “Is this the aurora borealis?”

“Oh yeah.” Logan grins up at the shimmer as if it’s an old friend. “To judge by the scent of it, tonight’s gonna be a hell of a show.”

So they stand up there and watch the Northern Lights for the better part of an hour. Marie doesn’t think about her powers, about Pyro, or anything else except the light show in the skies. Briefly, at one point, she feels the faintest psychic brush from Professor X; he’s only checking to make sure they’re fine, and withdraws as soon as he knows they are. It’s the only moment she even considers the X-Men.

They don’t talk. After a while, she gets kind of cold and starts to hug herself before Logan wraps an arm around her from behind. She leans back against him but doesn’t push for more. This is exactly what she needed at this moment – something beautiful, something so much bigger than herself that it would pull her out of her troubles. He understood that without having to be told. Marie has known for a long time that she had a crush on Logan; not until now has she thought she might really be in love with him.

She tries not to think about that either. It’s easy enough to get lost in the brilliance overhead, to take up her whole mind trying to find the right description.

 _Like a Rorschach test for God_ , Marie decides as a golden ripple unfurls overhead. _I wonder if He sees us in it.  
_  
Slowly the phenomenon fades, leaving them alone in the darkness. Logan doesn’t let go of her for a while after that, not until she says, “Thank you.”

“Some winters you see them all the time. I kept wishing we’d have a good night, so I could show you. Glad it was tonight.”

“Me too.”

“Probably more coming.”

Though she wishes she never had to leave this moment, the cold is deepening as the night draws on. It’s better to leave now, while it’s still her choice, while it’s still magic. “We can watch on the way back.”

They head back down even more slowly, the occasional greenish ripple of light showing their way. Once the motorcycle is parked, Logan walks with her to her cabin. The silence between them is more comfortable than tense, though Marie has to resist the urge to reach out and take his hand.

When they reach the door, as she turns to say good night, Logan says, “Can I come in?”

Does he think they need to have another Important Talk? Hopefully not. But she can’t turn him away. “Yeah. All right.”

Marie backs through the door, looking at Logan the whole while. The darkness of her cabin surrounds them both, deeper as he shuts the door behind him, and before she can fumble for a lantern, his hand has found the curve of her face. This isn’t about talking.

She tilts her mouth up for his kiss; she’s so new at this, and yet she understands just how he’ll move, just what he’ll do. When his lips close over hers, warm and softer than she would have imagined, Marie closes her eyes. The stubble of his whiskers is rough against her cheeks, but his kiss is almost impossibly gentle.

They part, each drawing in a shaky breath. Torn between hope and wariness, she whispers, “Are you going to leave again?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thought you were too worried about what was good for me.”

His grin turns the chill of her cabin to pure heat. “Turns out I’m not that nice.”

That does something to her knees and her head, dizzying but wonderful.

More softly, Logan says, “Only what you want. Only when you want it. But I’d like to stay a while.”

This is everything Marie’s dreamed about, everything she’s yearned for late at night as she twisted in her own sheets or brought herself off thinking about Logan or couldn’t sleep for wanting him, wanting someone, just wanting to know what it was like to feel another person’s naked skin against her own. But an unfamiliar fear creeps into her mind, and she blurts out, “Is this only because you think – because you think I’ll get my power back and I ought to know what it’s like to have somebody touch me?”

“No.” His voice is hardly more than a whisper. “It’s because I have to know what it’s like to touch you.”

And he does.

They take it slow. Logan draws her onto the bed, kisses her until her lips are swollen and tender, and runs his hands along her still-clothed body to learn her shape for a long time before anything comes off. That makes her half crazy – that’s the one thing she already knows how to do, get felt up with her clothes on – but the first time she feels his hands against her bare skin, she’s not embarrassed or tense at all, just crazy for it. Her jeans hit the floor about the same time his shirt does, but they leave it right there for a good while, just at the point where she can test her limits.

She’s ready for his hands on her breasts, his lips too, once he pushes down the straps of her tank and nuzzles her free from the cups of her bra. As he sucks at her, she winds her fingers through his coarse hair and shifts beneath him, tilting up against the hard pressure she can feel through his jeans. Logan tenses, but in a good way, and she whimpers as she feels the scrape of his teeth against her nipple.

One of his hands slides between her legs, his fingers finding the soft split of her flesh through the thin cotton of her panties – and as good as it feels, she does freeze up a bit, because nobody’s ever, ever touched her there. Before Marie can freak about being a baby or anything like that, Logan shifts his hand away. Instead he slides around to cup her ass, encouraging her to sling one of her legs around him. She does, and when he tugs her bra further down and starts kissing her breasts again, the freeze is forgotten. Relaxing into the touch, she finds herself grinding against his thigh, just the pressure of his muscles through the denim almost enough to send her over the edge.

When he rolls her on top of him, impatience gets the better of her and she tugs off her undershirt, tosses the bra away. Logan’s eyes darken as he draws her down for another kiss – and the feel of his chest against hers, bare skin on bare skin, is the most erotic thing she knows.

The kiss seems to go on forever, but eventually they have to come up for air. Shakily, she hooks her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans. “Take these off.”

Logan gives her a lazy grin, then slides her over beside him so he can obey. He pulls off jeans and shorts together, and as amazing as it is to see him naked and eager for her, Marie likes even more that he took all his clothes off first. It’s like he knows that makes it easier for her – seeing him vulnerable and open to her.

Well, that and the fact that he’s beautiful.

She touches him tentatively at first, more exploring his body than trying to arouse him. His balls roll gently against her palm. And his cock – it’s so hard for her, but the skin is soft, almost like a baby’s, which she didn’t expect somehow. At first she thinks he just looks different than pictures on the internet, then blushes to realize she’s naïve enough not to instantly recognize that he’s uncut.

Logan lies so still beneath her curious touch that it takes her a moment to realize how much it’s turning him on. His eyes are closed tightly, and his breath is coming quick and shallow.

Marie bites her lower lip, but she can’t keep back the smile. She whispers, “Want to teach me how to give a blow job?”

He opens his eyes, driven half-crazy with wanting. She could almost feel bad about this stretching out so long, if it weren’t so much fun. “Goddamn,” he says, and then Logan sits up and grabs her hard, crushing her against him in a kiss more feverish than any of the others. It’s wet, messy, nearly frantic, and before Marie knows it, she’s straddling him on the bed, nothing between them but her panties, hanging onto his shoulders while she moves against him. And that feels so good, that hard pressure there –

She cups his cock against her, rubbing just where she wants him, working her hips faster and faster. Logan’s hands grip her just at the waist, not changing how she moves but holding her up as she gives into it. The world narrows to the hard ridge of him against her, to the tension spiraling tighter inside, until everything springs up and out, white light and white noise and a keening sound she hardly recognizes as her own voice.

Her head falls back as she sags against Logan’s chest. He wraps his arms around her back as he kisses her face, her throat, her shoulder, quick and sweet. Marie’s face feels hot, and she’s sweating now, but Logan doesn’t seem to mind. She wonders if maybe she should have let him be the one to do that, but since he’s more turned on than ever – even harder against the now-soaked cotton of her underwear – it must have been okay.

He lowers her onto the bed, and his eyes meet hers as his fingers slide under the waistband of her panties. Apparently he wants to teach her how to give a blow job later. Logan wants to be inside her, and Marie knows she’s more than ready. She lifts her hips in silent permission.

His hands brush along the length of her thighs; her panties snag for a moment on her ankle before he tosses them aside. When his hand finds her this time, she doesn’t freeze one bit. Instead she watches the way his expression changes as his fingers press against everyplace that’s slick and wet for him now.

Logan pushes two fingers inside her. Marie only remembers that this might hurt after it doesn’t. _I’m one of the lucky ones,_ she thinks as his fingers slide in deeper, and then she starts to rock a little, testing how it might feel. It’s like she’s always known how to move, the information waiting in her muscles and bones for this moment. _I’m a lucky girl._

He lets her fuck his hand for a few minutes, slipping in a third finger, then adding movement of his own as he watches her body undulate to his touch. It goes from feeling different to feeling nice to feeling amazing. Just when Marie wishes he’d never stop, Logan pulls his hand away and lowers himself between her thighs.

 _Oh,_ Marie thinks, her lips parting as Logan enters her, her body sliding around him with pressure she never imagined, better than she’d ever thought it would feel. _This is it. This is it._

“Okay?” Logan whispers against her collarbone. He’s shaking with barely restrained eagerness; he wants to move. She wants him to.

“Yeah,” she says, and arches up to prove it.

Then they’re moving together, and either she finds his rhythm or he finds hers because it’s like they’re two parts of the same person. Marie revels in every inch of him she can feel, whether the thickness inside her or the hair of his chest, the rub of his thighs working between hers or his stubble-rough cheek against her temple. She wanted to know what it would be like to be touched – no, to be touched by someone she loves. Now she knows, and it’s the best thing she’s ever learned.

He hangs on for what she thinks must be a long time, and she only likes it better with each passing minute, but finally he breaks, moving faster and harder, driving into her so that she gasps in excitement, and then he tenses as he pulls out of her. His cock slides between their bellies as he grunts and shudders, and she feels him come, hot and wet on her skin.

Logan collapses beside her, panting. His arm remains across her chest, twice as heavy as it ought to be, but she likes the weight. For a few seconds they can only stare at each other, equal parts happy and exhausted, before Marie finally says, “Okay?”

That actually makes him grin. “Yeah.”

They sleep curled side by side, Logan’s breath warm against the back of her neck.

That night, a severe snowstorm comes plowing in, and there’s nothing to be done but wait it out. So they spend the day under the blankets together, the only evidence of the world outside the howling of the wind. Logan talks more than she’s ever heard him before – which is to say, still not that much, but he answers every question she asks. He tells her what’s it’s like to wake up without knowing who you are or how the world works, except that metal claws shouldn’t be coming out of your hands the way they do. He listens when she talks about what her life might be like if she’d stayed in Mississippi, what she misses and what she doesn’t. And he shows her how to go down on him, how he would go down on her, and lots of other things she was hoping to know.

She’ll worry about the Cure, her future, her choices and all the rest of it after the storm.


	22. Charles

Damn it, it’s the first day they’ve had something concrete to do, something urgent to plan, and they’re snowed in. Evening is drawing on, almost 24 hours into the storm, and the heavy winds continue to blow flakes sideways so thick and fast that it’s almost impossible even to see the nearest cabins. Charles glares out the frosted windowpane at the whiteout as if it had personally offended him.

He reaches for Ororo’s mind. _Can anything be done about this?_

From her own cabin she thinks back, _I could send the blizzard away, but it would be highly disruptive across an enormous area. This is a large front. It needs release. Better to let it snow._ She can be protective of weather patterns.

“Looks as if we’re snowbound for tonight, too,” Charles says to Erik, who is pouring hot water into two of the last remaining teabags from their supplies. “Inconvenient.”

“We need to plan. Now we have time, and no distractions. You and I have made considerable progress in the last day. I fail to see the problem.” Erik only sounds calm; he _feels_ oddly agitated, as he has ever since the Brotherhood attack, though he’s keeping it so far beneath the surface that no one without telepathy could ever tell. Just as easily, he says, “Too bad it keeps us from seeing the aurora borealis again, though.”

“How do you – of course. They’re caused by geomagnetic storms. You feel them as well as see them, don’t you?”

Erik nods. His mood remains black, but he explains quite steadily: “They feel marvelous – rather like fur against bare skin.”

Which brings back memories of Erik’s bare skin. Charles never wrapped him in fur – someone else must have had that pleasure – but he can imagine it. Can’t help imagining it, now.

“Green is most common,” Erik says, watching the snow-blind window. “It feels somewhat coarse, but not at all unpleasant. Then pink and red, which become silkier – that’s what we would see right now, in fact – then gold, which is rather rich. Mink, perhaps. The rarest of all is blue, and that feels indescribable.”

“Share it with me?”

Erik does. Charles feels the slip of it, like being massaged by something unnamable but utterly wonderful. It’s the sensation he always imagined for the furs the White Witch wrapped Edmund in when he first stumbled upon Narnia.

Despite that pleasant exchange, Erik’s gloom is deepening. He’s always had his moods, and his reasons for them, which is why Charles tries to wait them out – but this has lasted for more than a day now. The temptation to simply pry into his mind and find out what’s going on is powerful, but that’s not the best way to handle this. Unable to bear it any longer, Charles says, “Erik, what’s wrong?”

“You’ve never fully grasped the concept of letting someone else raise the subject if and only if they feel like talking, have you?”

Charles, who keeps his silence on more unspoken thoughts than most people can imagine, considers this something of a low blow. “Very well. If you’d rather concentrate on more planning tonight, we can do that.”

Erik’s dark mood spikes so swiftly that it seems to be a force in the room, like cold wind whistling through cracks in the walls. “Yes. Better this way. Everything smoothed over and made right.” Erik’s smile is taut. “That’s how you prefer things.”

“You can be angry with me for prying or angry with me for ignoring your moods, but you can’t be both. Pick one.”

As usual, Erik doesn’t acknowledge that he’s being contradictory. He considers his words for a long, charged pause before he speaks. “That didn’t affect you, out there yesterday? Everyone talking about how things ought to have been all along?”

Charles realizes what Erik’s getting at; he can see the outline of it in Erik’s mind, and truth be told, in his own. “We’ve always needed each other.”

“All mutants. And you and I.”

“You and I,” Charles repeats.

“I prided myself that – that our leaving one another proved something. How committed we both were. How willing we were to give up what we wanted most for our causes,” Erik says, the admission costing him with every word. “But we were better leaders together than either of us could be on his own.”

Charles goes very still as the recognition settles over him too.

When they turned away from each other, they betrayed what they most believed. They betrayed the very causes they thought they were sacrificing for, and every person who believed in them. In losing each other, they lost everything.

Silence stretches between them for a few moments as Charles takes it in.

“I gave you up for nothing,” Erik says. The hell of it is that he’s right.

Charles fights hard to remain steady. He’s always tried not to let regret be his master; it’s the only thing that gets him through. “We can work together now. We can lead side by side.”

“It’s as easy as that for you?”

“Nothing about this is easy!” Steady, Charles thinks, steady. “Can we not be grateful for what we’ve gotten back?”

Wearily, Erik leans back on the threadbare couch. Despite his years, there is something about his expression that reminds Charles of the Erik he first met – wary and jaded, yet still keenly vulnerable. Seeing that in him wrenches Charles’ heart; he has so few defenses against Erik, the person he has tried harder to defend himself against than any other. “Charles, I’m more grateful for your friendship than you can ever know. A few months ago, I would have traded the remaining years of my life for one more chess game with you.”

There’s no chess set here; nobody thought to pack one, not even Hank. “Erik,” Charles murmurs, unable to find other words.

Erik continues, “But to answer your question, no. I can’t be grateful for what we’ve gotten back. Not when I compare it to what we might have had.”

“You know what you are to me.” The words come out very even and sure. “And I know what I’ve meant to you. Of course I wish that we might have – that things could have been different. Yet we cannot allow ourselves to dwell on our regrets.”

“So generous. So noble. So tidy.” Every word is like a flick from a sharpened knife-point, barely touching the skin yet drawing blood. “Do you never allow yourself to lose control, Charles? You used to.”

“We’ve both matured.”

“We’ve both gotten old, you mean. Even if you’re not showing it quite as much these days.”

“Catching up fast,” Charles says, running his hand over his newly shorn head. Though he hasn’t lost all his hair again yet, it became thin enough that he tired of half-measures, surrendered to cabin fever, and took the clippers to his scalp a couple hours ago.

The gentle joke doesn’t work. Erik’s eyes narrow, though he’s more curious than angry. “How eager you are to change the subject. You have honesty from the rest of us whether we like it not; are you so unwilling to pay us the same courtesy?”

Charles knows he’s being baited, but it works nevertheless. “This from someone who spent decades wearing a helmet that locked me out.”

“You’re the one locking doors now.” Erik is entirely too pleased with the neatness of his trap. “So the bloodless saint is only an illusion after all.”

“As you know full well.” Temper finally aroused, Charles decides that if Erik wants a fight this badly, he can have one. “If you really want to hear it, I decided a long time ago that you would have left me eventually regardless. That day on the beach – it was important for many reasons, but between us, I think it hardly mattered.”

Erik stares at him; he doesn’t appear to like the argument he worked so hard to get. Good. “Now, this I have to hear. How is it that you think the final hours of our relationship ‘hardly mattered’?”

“You would never have allowed yourself to remain with me, not in the long term. Not with me or with anyone. Once you told me that, after Magda, you had never let yourself fully fall in love again because you saw relationships as baggage. Ties that held you down. You couldn’t have seen yourself as the weapon of our race, the leader of this great movement, and let yourself enjoy anything as humble – as human – as a love affair. Admit it, Erik. You regarded your feelings for me as a weakness.”

Charles braces himself for a retort that doesn’t come. Instead Erik considers what he’s said, and although he looks more ill-tempered than before, he finally says, “There’s some truth to that.”

Why must he be so disarming at the worst possible times? Charles sighs as he braces his hands against the table; he’s started to notice some tiredness in his legs and back after a long day – a sign of things to come.

Erik continues, “It frightened me. I’d trained myself to need nothing, and after such a short time, I needed you. Like I needed air.”

“So you suffocated the human part of yourself by walking away.”

“Do you honestly think you couldn’t have won me back? There were days – there were years where, at any moment, if you had come to me, I would have given up anything to have you back. I would have given up everything.”

“Your cause? Your anger? I doubt it,” Charles snaps. “And how could I have ever known?”

“How you hated that helmet. Are you so unwilling to understand what it’s like for those of us locked in our own skulls?”

“Yes. And I won’t apologize for it. What’s natural for the rest of you is unnatural for me. From the time I was a baby, I knew that people were different from objects because I could sense something of their thoughts and feelings. When you wore that helmet, you didn’t feel like a man to me. You felt like a machine. And I think you preferred it that way.”

“Just as you preferred your moral superiority and your solitude to humbling yourself in any effort to make things right between us.” By now Erik is as close to the edge as Charles. “Did you ever try? Did you ever come to me as anything but the Honorable Leader of the Opposition? Except, of course, on one of our nights.”

They’ve made love dozens of times since their breakup, sometimes during long, languid evenings stolen for each other in hotels around the world, sometimes through purely psychic encounters when that damned helmet was taken off and Charles could indulge them both. It’s not as if they ever stopped, exactly – the last time was a decade ago, and yet Charles never felt sure it was the final time.

He remembers that night in Los Angeles – or is it Erik remembering?

“Don’t distract me,” Charles warns, ignoring the wicked gleam in Erik’s eye. “There were times I pleaded with you. I’d have gone to my knees if I still could have. And you know it.”

A long pause follows before Erik admits, “You did. Just never when I could hear you. And when I could hear you, you never spoke.”

“What rotten timing we have.”

“My dear Charles. How inadequate.”

“What would be adequate to what we lost in each other? I don’t have the words for that. I don’t think they exist.”

Erik’s dark eyes search his, understanding at last that Charles feels the loss as sharply as he does. It doesn’t comfort him; Charles wishes it would. He hates the thought of causing Erik yet more pain. Quietly, Erik says, “You never used to need words.”

That’s an invitation, however tacit. But the invitation is for them to revisit their pain – to open the wounds they’ve both spend the last few decades trying in vain to heal.

And yet, maybe Erik’s right. Maybe they have to face it before they can fully move on.

“Let me in,” Charles whispers.

And Erik does.

Images from his mind flood Charles’ inner vision: His own death, almost as horrible to see as it was to experience, and the way Erik had at first been unable to understand how he could continue to breathe, why his heart kept beating, in a world without Charles in it. Kissing frantically in the car that first afternoon, the feeling of his own hair clutched within Erik’s fingers as he kept him close, still afraid Charles would pull away. A newspaper photograph of him taken the first time Charles “went public,” and Erik torn between pride, longing, and the foolishness of feeling such longing at just the sight of Charles’ face in black ink on newsprint. One of the nights they came together – yes, Los Angeles, hardly a year after the split, Erik swearing at Charles’ folly but unable to stop himself from pulling open his shirt, sending buttons clattering against the wall, practically crawling onto the wheelchair, bending the arms outward the better to straddle Charles and grind against him.

Charles’ own memories well up too, unfettered. Another of their stolen nights – yes, Amsterdam, when at the height of his climax Erik bit down on Charles’ shoulder and the pain was as good as any possible pleasure. How sickening it was to see that Erik had been abused in jail by William Stryker and his goons, the hollow in his heart that came from witnessing that blue-black bruise. Sitting next to one another in the medical bay of the ship on the day they met, each shivering from cold and the new awareness of each other. What it was like to lie in bed when they had first become lovers and watch Erik sleep, how the beauty of his broad shoulders and tapered waist paled beside how good it was to see him, however briefly, at peace – to think that maybe for a day, for an hour, he’d helped Erik forget his pain and remember joy –

“Don’t,” Erik whispers, and Charles instantly pulls them back into their own heads. Erik’s right; it’s too much. The study in the mansion dissolves, and once again they are in their little cabin, where it is cold and dark.

For a few moments they can only stare at each other, awash in the full awareness of how much they lost. Charles allows himself to think of it so seldom. And now – when Erik has found him and saved him against all odds – now he has to realize they really might have shared their entire lives.

He folds Erik in his arms, and they simply hold each other.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says.

“I am too.”

When he’s certain he won’t cry, Charles leans his forehead against Erik’s. They move closer at the same moment, the urge mutual. It’s a kiss goodbye, no more and no less.

Or it was intended to be.

But Charles doesn’t pull away, and Erik doesn’t either, and the kiss lasts one moment longer than it was meant to – the moment that changes everything.

The moment when he first realizes that their future doesn’t have to look like their past.

Their lips part, but they remain there, faces only inches apart. Erik rests his forehead against Charles’ again, buying time.

Tentatively, Charles kisses him once more – softly, hardly more than a brush, but this time he’s testing the waters. Erik doesn’t pull away. His arousal and his uncertainty are no less sharp than Charles’ own.

Charles slides his hand along the back of Erik’s neck. “You surprised me.”

“I thought it was you who surprised me.”

Another kiss, even briefer than the last. They can’t meet each other’s eyes. At the moment, Charles’ mind is racing too fast to sense anyone else’s, but he knows Erik’s confusion must be as great as his own.

Yes, they’ve made love many times since splitting up. If they were to sleep together on those same terms, that would be simple to negotiate. What’s happening now isn’t simple. Charles doesn’t just want Erik’s body or his mind for a night; he wants Erik back, wholly and completely. Erik wants him back too. And if there’s anything left to stand in their way, Charles doesn’t remember what it is.

They’ve never been here before. Since their split, they’ve never had any reason to expect a future together; they have considered their relationship a lost cause for so long that they failed to recognize hope when it came to them.

It’s disconcerting. It’s wonderful. It’s terrifying.

All he can think of to say is, “It would be a hell of a gamble.”

Erik chuckles ruefully. “You think this is the gamble?”

He’s right. The gamble is believing that they’re on the same side, that their vision of how mutantkind is to proceed from here is mutual and shared. If that’s true, then coming together as lovers isn’t dangerous – it’s how things should be, how they always should have been. If it’s not, then they’ll destroy each other no matter what.

“I don’t know that I would survive losing you another time,” Erik says. From anyone else, it would be melodrama; from him, it’s only fact.

“Nor I.” Charles brushes one thumb along Erik’s cheekbone. “But we parted once when we shouldn’t have. I don’t want to do that again.”

Erik kisses him this time, long and slow, and Charles opens his mouth into it. How long has it been since he kissed someone this way, lips apart, tongue pushing inside? Years, maybe. He’s forgotten how intoxicating it can be. How the body rises up, demanding that the mind give in. Their kiss goes on and on, Erik’s arms winding around him as Charles threads his fingers through silvery hair.

When they part, they gaze at each other, breathing quickly, still unsure. Charles speaks so softly it’s hardly even a whisper: “Come to bed.”

Erik’s uncertainty washes over Charles, blinding him to any potential answer, until the moment Erik kisses him again.

For the first few minutes, they can’t stop kissing long enough to do anything else. Charles hasn’t let himself get simply carried away like this in ages, and he can tell from the way Erik surrenders to it that the same is true for him. He slides his hands along Erik’s back, his chest, his thighs, reminding himself of the contours and planes of his body. Already it seems impossible to him that he’s gone so long without simply touching Erik like this – without feeling that he had the right to.

Then he can’t bear it any longer, and he gets to his feet, towing Erik after him toward the bedroom. Thus far Erik’s slept on the sofa, leaving the bed to him; from now on, they share.

As they stumble through the doorway, Charles whispers between kisses, “I forgot how good this feels.”

“You can’t have done without all these years.”

Still bucking for a fight: Sometimes Erik doesn’t know when to shut it off. Charles hasn’t done without all these years, but he says only the simple truth. “What I can do – with my mind – I rarely bother with bodies any longer.”

“Lazy,” Erik chides him as he walks Charles backward to the side of the bed and pushes him down to the mattress. As he lowers himself over Charles’ body, he murmurs, “None of your illusions and fantasies tonight.”

“I don’t have any fantasies better than this.”

That, too, is no more than the truth, but hearing it makes Erik’s expression soften, and once again Charles sees a glimpse of the younger, more vulnerable person he first loved. “You dear man,” Erik murmurs.

Then they’re caught up in kissing again, in undressing one another. Charles’ gifts mean that he missed the lack of sensation below the waist far less than most paraplegics, but while it’s returned he intends to enjoy it for all it’s worth. He revels in the feeling of Erik moving against him, Erik’s hands stroking him, exploring a body he’s been apart from for too long.

No fantasies. No illusions. But this is a night to share memory. More than that: a night to redeem it.

Without fading the reality of this bed or this room, Charles brings up one of the images Erik just shared with him: that night in Los Angeles when they got so carried away that they destroyed a perfectly good wheelchair. Slowly he matches his memory of that night to Erik’s own, and it’s like putting together two halves of a torn photograph. The ragged edges seam together, and suddenly it’s there, it’s so much more real than it could have been for either of them alone – Erik’s excitement as he raked his hand across Charles’ chest, the way Charles felt vulnerable and turned on at once as Erik lifted him in his arms to carry him to bed for the first time, how Charles wasn’t sure his half-paralyzed body could still please Erik, and all the ways he and Erik learned he could. Not only does the sheer erotic power of the memory double, but the love also gleams through as it never did before, not even when it was really happening.

“I put the wheelchair straight the next morning,” Erik protests softly as Charles undoes his trousers.

“It never rolled right again.” This is whispered between kisses, over the rustle of fabric being pushed away. “No matter how often Hank tinkered with it.”

Erik offers the next memory: That night they kissed for an hour while Nat King Cole played on the hi-fi. How, after many years of mostly hurried, meaningless couplings, Erik had luxuriated in having a lover he could hold close like this – and what it was like to stop running and stand still, because he was finally exactly where he wanted to be. Charles matches it with the way he realized that night that Erik, for all his flinty exterior and dark humor, needed to be protected – from those who had hurt him, from himself, from the endless petty cruelty of the world, and how badly Charles had wanted to be that protector.

“Me against the world.” He stretches alongside Erik, their bodies finally naked together. Erik is so much older now – he not that far behind, at this point – and yet what is that age but a reminder of the years they have loved each other? “What a fool I was.”

“But a heroic fool for all that.” The way Erik says this turns it into a caress.

The memories continue to flicker within them, each offering up whatever is most precious, most private – unafraid to see it through each other’s eyes. How they flirted with each other during those first few weeks, their attraction forbidden by the day’s mores, and yet how all the world’s condemnation wasn’t enough to keep them from gazing into each other’s eyes.

How it felt for Erik to look down and see Charles’ comatose form and feel blinding joy because he was alive, and now Erik could bring him back – and what it was like for Charles to emerge from the terrible dizzying dark and see Erik next to him, holding his hands.

How thrilling it had been to lean close to one another in the front seat of the car when they kissed for the first time.

Every pair of images becomes one. Every gap in memory is filled in. Every breach is healed.

They’re not young men anymore, his recent regeneration notwithstanding; what used to be almost instantaneous takes time now. But taking time is sweet. As they soar through their pasts, Charles strokes Erik gently, then urgently, feeling his response moment by moment, until he can resist no longer and bows his head to take Erik between his lips.

Erik groans. Encouraged, Charles uses his tongue to caress him, sucks deeply, opens his mind enough to feel Erik’s pleasure along with his own. As the fullness of it hits him, sending him reeling, he sends the sensation back into Erik in turn. This give and take was once second nature to them; now it’s enough to make Erik cry out.

“I want you,” Erik whispers, and Charles’ mind fills with the mental image of what he yearns to do. It’s what Charles wants too – dear God, he’s missed this.

There’s salve beside the bed that will work. He hands it to Erik, kisses him desperately while Erik slicks his fingers, and then splays himself to his lover’s touch. Erik’s hand pushes within him – sometimes they did that, just that, and it was beyond exhilarating, maybe again soon but not tonight. And already he can imagine other nights with Erik, a future when they are never apart; it’s the greatest joy Charles has known in years.

At this point, Erik can hear Charles’ thoughts as clearly as Charles can hear his. Erik whispers, “Never without you,” as he spoons around Charles’ back.

“Never again.” Charles draws his leg up and reaches back to comb his fingers through Erik’s hair as Erik clutches at his pelvic bone and holds him fast. “Never – _oh_.”

And then the fusion goes beyond bodies, beyond words, as what they share builds and burns past containment. When they come, Charles captures the moment, stretches it out, holding them there at the pinnacle until there’s no greater pleasure to feel, no separation left, and they fall together into deep water, ripples spreading out for miles.

**

Several cabins away, in their new bed, Kitty rolls over, suddenly aroused, and kisses Bobby to consciousness.

In yet another cabin, Storm jolts from a vivid erotic dream to wish that Nightcrawler were with her – just as, with a BAMF and a swirl of blue smoke, he appears, in the hope that she’s awake.

Hank doesn’t wake up, but his dream changes from something forgettable into a vision he’ll never erase from his mind: He and Raven, twined together in his bed at the cabin, though a softer, warmer version of the same. But he’s the one changing shapes, from the boy he was into the blue-furred man he’s become, and each shift drives her even more crazy with desire.

Raven, too, remains asleep. Her dream is fragmented at first – is that Erik with her? Beast? At long last, Charles? At first it’s almost frightening, not knowing who’s touching her, who’s inside her, until finally the dream illuminates enough for her to understand that she’s with all three of them. It’s their first week together, and this time they’ll do it right. She flushes darker blue as she writhes between them, laughing out loud in her sleep with joy.

Wrapped up in each other as they are, Logan and Marie hardly notice the charge that sweeps over them, but his fingers grip her thighs a little more fiercely, and Marie bucks against his tongue more urgently, and the climax that sweeps through her makes her cry out in a way that gets Logan hard in an instant.

All throughout the town – everywhere within twenty miles of Charles and Erik – the wave of arousal ripples strong enough to enter every mind. Those with a partner reach out to them; those with fantasies relish those. And the children too young to understand desire in that sense dream instead of the aurora borealis shining pure, silvery blue.


	23. The World Outside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cribbed and paraphrased a bit from _The Sun_ in this chapter. It will be very clear what was cribbed, and what was changed.

_  
The New York Times, February 2_

“… Although the Cure was meant to end the “mutant question,” more questions are being asked than ever before in the wake of anti-mutant violence. Those who once found mutant powers terrifying have had to see how easily mutants can in fact be captured and killed. Those who did not recognize mutants as part of humanity have seen mutants’ families and friends grieving in the wake of a Purifier “Testament,” their term for their filmed execution-style murders. Even those who remain wary of mutants in recent polls are now far more likely to indicate that they would not support violence against mutants – and support for legal measures such as mandatory registration is dropping. Politicos in Washington who made pro-Purifier statements only a few months prior are now distancing themselves from the group … “

 _Universal Press Syndicate, February 5_

Dear Abby,

My teenage son, “Ricky,” has come out to us as a mutant. He has X-ray vision; we never guessed, though now I know how he always found his Christmas presents! His father, “Mack,” is completely horrified – he says Jamie should take the Cure as soon as possible. I don’t agree. Ricky says he doesn’t use his abilities to break the law or hurt anyone, and I believe him; he’s always been a great kid who has deserved our trust. So why should he have to change! Mack says people don’t understand, and I say that’s their problem. What do you think, Abby? – MUTANT MOM IN MINNESOTA

Dear MUTANT MOM,

Faithful readers of my column know that when the Cure was first announced last summer, I urged readers who were mutants or had mutant family members to look into this “solution” to their problems. Well, give me thirty lashes with a wet noodle, because countless readers since then have written in to share their stories about being a mutant or living with one, and they’ve convinced me that mutation is no problem at all. It is our failure to accept others who are “different” that causes the trouble. Yes, some mutants break the law – but so do plenty of other folks, and they don’t need powers to do it. By and large, mutants are just like us – and tomorrow I’ll be printing a series of letters that prove it.

Talk to your husband and find out why he is so strongly opposed to your son remaining a mutant. He may only be afraid for Ricky, given the violence against mutants in recent months. I’m sending you a copy of a new booklet I’m making available to Dear Abby readers: “Mutation – Embracing the Change.” Send $4.99 and a self-addressed stamped envelope to …

 _The Sun, February 9_

The identity of a top Premier League footballer who wishes to announce himself as a mutant will be revealed tonight. A TV investigation into undisclosed mutants in sport had focused on him, but sources claim he then approached the show to share his story openly.

The star will be named by Channel 4 show “Dispatches” as it focuses on the issue of mutants in sport and whether their participation is a violation of league rules.

The show claims to have discovered the identities of dozens of footballers who refused to take genetic tests when some clubs began looking into the matter late last year. Their names have been kept secret by the Football Association and their clubs.

The star insists that his mutant abilities are unrelated to football, Channel 4 insiders say.

Terry Colburn of the British Mutant Defense League says, “I hope this footballer will become a test case for the league. If his mutation does not provide an unfair advantage then there is no reason on Earth he should not compete.”

 _The Wall Street Journal, February 10_

Scott Aherne never visited the Xavier School before he sent his son there. He never even looked at a brochure.

“I didn’t want to lay eyes on the place,” he says. “I figured it was probably like some kind of reform school. Back then I thought that was all a kid like Vince could expect.”

Aherne, 47, was no different from many parents who discover they have a mutant child. When his son Vince began demonstrating the power to conduct electricity – and insisting on being called “Volt” – his father only wanted to keep it secret. The invitation for Vince to attend Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in New Salem, New York, seemed like a godsend. Although the school had only publicly identified its mission of educating and sheltering mutant youth within the past year, it had been in existence since the early 1960s. Its headmaster, Charles Xavier, was one of the most prominent spokesmen for mutant rights.

Despite those credentials, Aherne still expected the worst from the school … and still sent Vince there regardless.

“I wanted the problem to go away,” Aherne says, his eyes filling with tears. “Instead I sent my son away.”

Then, last November, the Xavier School became one of the first targets of anti-mutant violence by the political movement now known as the Purifiers. Letters were sent to parents, asking for permission to take their children to safety – and secrecy.

“I said yes and told myself it was to keep Vince from being hurt,” Aherne says. “But sometimes I wonder whether I lacked the courage to face his problems myself.”

Some students did return home – apparently all whose parents requested that they return. But the rest of the students, along with the faculty and the pro-mutant fighting force known as the “X-Men,” have remained underground ever since. In the wake of their absence, the X-Men are now more missed than feared – as are the children under their care.

“This place is a mansion,” Aherne says now, as he looks at the Xavier School (unoccupied except for a private, wholly human security force, which has no direct contact with the school administrators.) “It’s beautiful. Why didn’t I ever think it could be beautiful?”

 _CNN.com, February 13_

Some observers call “the mutant question” the last battleground of the modern culture wars in the United States. However, the battleground keeps changing, and the question now is how the public at large will respond to the Purifier “Testaments” – filmed executions of mutants whose powers were insufficient to free them from armed militia groups.

According to a Pew Research study, even people who would consider themselves “strongly anti-mutant” oppose the Purifiers’ actions. The group, led by Reverend Matthew Risman, is now defined as a fringe group whose actions are not to be supported – much as the church of the Rev. Fred Phelps attracts no support from mainstream Christian leaders.

However, opinions vary sharply on how to respond to these attacks. The public seems divided on whether mutants should receive legal protection, and what form that protection might take. There is nearly a 50/50 split on the question of registration – and there is no consensus on whether registration is a pro-mutant or anti-mutant move. Some respondents saw this as a “check on mutant powers,” while still others argued it was the best protection for a group that may be unable to protect itself.

Which way will the political tide turn? The Pew study results indicate that it’s far too early to tell …


	24. Erik

The first thing Erik thinks when he awakens to see Charles sleeping next to him is that he is being completely ridiculous.

 _Honestly,_ he tells himself, _aren’t you past believing in fairy tales?_

Yet this is no fairy tale, no dream. He is really in Charles’ bed. He has taken Charles back – or has Charles taken him? Both, it seems.

There were mornings in the first few weeks after their split when Erik awoke and reached for Charles before he remembered. He spent the hours after that castigating himself, searching for every last shred of hope that remained and burning it to nothingness. Or so he’d thought. Something must have survived, preserved deep inside, to bring him to this.

Erik turns on his side, the better to watch Charles doze. The sheer wonder of the moment is counterbalanced nicely by Charles’ tendency to sleep with his mouth open. A small smile tugs at Erik’s lips, and the feeling that steals over him is strangely like contentment.

Then, very suddenly, Charles sits bolt upright in bed. Instantly he has shifted from slumber to wakefulness and alarm. “What is it?” Erik says.

“The children.”

Erik starts to get out of bed, the better to defend their students, but Charles lays one hand on his arm to hold him in place. His expression is shifting from concern to bemusement. “Wait.”

“Are we under attack?”

“I don’t think so. No. We aren’t.” Charles leans against the headboard, clearly relieved. “It was an icefall. Came crashing against a vacant cabin near the girls’ dormitory – frightened them. But it’s nothing really.” He starts to smile. “I believe they’re now planning a snowball fight.”

Erik seizes Charles by the shoulders and kisses him soundly. Within moments he’s borne Charles down onto the bed. They don’t go beyond kissing and caressing – they’re both still completely sated from the night before – and yet somehow this feels just as intimate as their lovemaking did. This is all Erik wants, all he can ever imagine wanting: the rasp of Charles’ unshaven cheek against his, the taste of his mouth, his hand stroking the length of Erik’s back.

But then Charles folds him in a psychic embrace to match the physical one; love surrounds him, infuses him, and Erik knows he wants this too – today and always.

When at last they break off their kisses, Erik nestles himself in Charles’ arms and rests his head against Charles’ chest. Once he trusts himself to speak, he says, “I missed that.”

“Did you?” Charles runs one hand through Erik’s hair, and clearly there’s something else he wants to say, but he hesitates. Erik waits. Finally Charles gets it out: “Sometimes I wondered – on a few of our nights just before we left off, when we weren’t getting on as well – I wondered whether you really wanted me. Or whether you just wanted what I could do.”

“Your Jedi mind tricks, you mean. Honestly, Charles, you know better than that.” One of the most intense sexual experiences they ever shared took place on a night when Erik left the helmet on.

“I knew you would – ” To Erik’s surprise, Charles’ chest starts to shake with repressed laughter. “The minute, the very minute they said that line in the movie, Star Wars or Empire Strikes Back or whichever one it was – I knew if you saw it too, you’d say that to me one day.”

“ _If_ I saw it? Good Lord. I’m not exactly a fan of modern popular culture, but I do occasionally leave the house.”

“We’ve got decades of pop culture to discuss, you know. There were so many times I just wanted to hear what you would think of something. Especially something ridiculous.”

Their meetings were always so highly charged – in one way or another – that they’ve discussed almost nothing trivial or lighthearted in all the time since. “I know. Can you believe we’ve never had a chance to make fun of disco?”

Charles can’t hold back the laughter any longer, and Erik rolls back, the better to see his face. “Oh, God. That was the worst. Polyester suits and satin shirts.” He gives Erik a mischievous look. “Although I do seem to remember someone adopting a rather disco mustache around that time.”

“I thought you liked that mustache. We had rather spectacular sex one weekend while I had that mustache.”

“ _In spite_ of the mustache.”

“And who spent the 1980s in those ghastly multicolored pullovers? The ones with the triangles and the lines and … things.”

Charles covers his eyes with his hand, as if wincing. “Guilty as charged.” He strokes along Erik’s shoulder as his expression softens. “It’s good to see you laughing.”

Erik experiences a sudden moment of awareness that their relationship will not always be like this – drowsy post-coital laughter. Kisses and conversation, without a disagreement in the world, everything so easy and gentle and right.

But Erik has spent most of his life torn between fearing a horrific future and remembering a brutal past. For today, he decides, he’s going to live in the now. This is a very good now to have, and there’s no point in wasting it.

“It’s easier to laugh when you’re happy.” Erik curls further into Charles’ embrace. “No one has ever made me happier than you.”

“Erik. I love you.”

Only after Charles kisses him does Erik realize how seldom they’ve said those words to one another. And yet it’s always been there. He closes his eyes and surrenders to the kiss, hoping it’s possible for some things to go unsaid – for some truths to be understood without words. Then, maybe, they really do understand one another after all.


	25. Charles

Digging out the snow late that evening would be a chore, were Ororo not able to summon the winds to blow most of it away into huge drifts on the edge of their small town. Charles wonders how long it will be before they can restore communications; they were on the verge of creating wireless access, which would be a boon on many fronts. The students leap about, finding the break from routine and confinement exciting, whereas the X-Men are stuck chipping ice away from locks and checking whether their food stores have frozen solid.

Charles walks out of his cabin with Erik; they’re not hand in hand or anything like that, because that’s not how either of them conducts himself, but there must be some subtle cues they’re sending. Hank’s ears adjust at an angle that often means he’s reconsidering a situation. Even he makes no assumptions, though. The one person who knows – who automatically understands, because she’s been inside Erik’s head enough to make the connection – is Marie. She straightens, looks away and hurries toward the vehicles, supposedly for a check of the equipment but really to get farther away from them.

Although Logan starts to follow her, Charles motions for him to stay put. Logan gets a rather wary look on his face – and given what Charles now senses guiltily floating atop his memories, no wonder – but he acquiesces. There’s a definite edge to it; Logan intends to find out what’s wrong with Marie sooner rather than later. But there’s trust there too.

Charles hopes he deserves it.

When he finds Marie, she’s tapping the motorcycle’s gauges and scowling. As he approaches, she glances over her shoulder and freezes; she didn’t expect him to actually confront her. “Hello,” he says gently. “Are you all right?”

She takes the question in an entirely different light than he intended it. “Logan and I – it’s not like he pressured me or anything.”

“I realize that.”

“He’s sweet, really.” Her cheeks flush, and then she turns back to the motorcycle, as if that will help.

Charles’ talents have not given him any greater insight into what relationships will work out in the end. Sometimes it’s easy enough to sense when something is doomed, but usually another person’s romance is a tangle of emotions that he’s no better at sorting out than anyone else. Of course, there are obvious pitfalls in this case: the age gap between them, plus Logan’s myriad attitude problems and murky past. But Marie is an adult now, however young, and their relationship isn’t exploitive – Charles can tell that much. Beyond that, it’s none of his business.

“I didn’t come here to lecture you about your love life,” he says. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”

“Oh. Okay.” She glances over her shoulder. “So, you’re here because – ”

“Because I rather thought you wanted to lecture me.”

Marie drops any pretense of caring about the condition of the motorcycle at this moment. “Professor – seriously, you can’t let Magneto come back. I don’t mean – you and him – I don’t mean that. Not just that, anyway.” She’s more worried for him than angry, which Charles finds oddly touching. “Have you forgotten what he did to me? What he did to you? I know he’s had a lot of stuff happen to him, and I know he rescued you and everything, but that doesn’t mean he’s changed. Not really. Even if it seems like he has here and now – what happens when we get back out in the world? Everything will be different then. More like it was before.” Her gaze shadows as she wonders what that means for her and Logan, but she doesn’t let it distract her. “Are you going to let Magneto make our decisions? Let him be in charge with you? Because I don’t trust his judgment, and you shouldn’t either.”

After she finishes, Charles considers what she’s said very carefully. Marie is young, and speaking impulsively, but that doesn’t mean her words aren’t worth listening to.

Yet she has not been within Erik’s mind, has not felt the transformation there. Charles has, and he trusts that more than anything else.

Finally he says, “You don’t have to excuse Erik for what he did to you. It was cruel in the extreme, and unjustifiable. That act is yours to forgive and no one else’s. I’ll never ask you to accept it.”

Marie relaxes slightly. “Okay.”

“What I will ask you to accept is that now Erik is on our side. We’re facing a crisis unlike any other in our race’s history, and we need each other. All mutants, even the ones we’ve fought in the past. That includes Erik. You don’t have to like him; you don’t have to trust his judgment. You only have to understand that he wants the same thing we want. He wants mutants to be safe and free, all of us, everywhere.”

“But what he’ll do to make that happen – it’s not right.”

“I sincerely believe Erik regrets his past choices. If he were being less than honest with me, I’d know.”

She runs one hand through her hair, obviously trying to calm herself and yet make him less calm. “At Alkali Lake, when Stryker’s men were after us – Professor, he left you to die.”

That hurts, but he reminds himself that the pain isn’t something she caused, just something she’s made him recall. “That’s mine to forgive, and no one else’s.”

Marie blinks. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I don’t blame you for being concerned.” Charles sighs. “You can always speak your mind, Marie. Be honest. I’ll try to do the same.” He hasn’t spent enough time being accountable, these past many years.

Although she doesn’t like it, she accepts this. Again, there’s that trust he relies on so much. “All right. Just be careful.”

Her desire to keep him from being hurt makes him smile. She’s so young that she believes such a thing is possible. “I will. And tell Logan to stop worrying I’m about to put him under house arrest, would you?”

That makes her laugh, so they part well.

As he heads back toward the others, though, Charles finds himself reflecting on one particular thing she said. What happens when they return to the regular world? In this snowy, quiet place, anything seems possible, even miracles. But after their mission in China, after they’ve reclaimed the mansion and their rights – then what? Will Erik’s change of heart hold? Will Charles still be able to see through Erik’s eyes?

Then he glimpses Erik, who is talking very seriously to a few of the students too young to be frightened of him; Charles delves into the conversation just enough to understand that Erik is explaining what a good snow fort they could build, and that the children like this idea. It’s impossible not to smile.

Erik has always said hope was his failing. Charles always felt it was his strength. Either way, he won’t abandon it now.


	26. Raven

If she could only shift her form again, Raven thinks, she would feel whole.

Erik has come back, as sorry as she ever hoped he would be. They’ve spent hours trying to reawaken her powers; he’s worked with her as tirelessly as he did for himself. As yet she feels nothing, but she begins to see what it might be like, when her transformation back to herself begins.

Charles and his X-Men are finally on the right side. They are working together to strike back at humanity, not with lethal force, but effectively. Purposefully. She can respect that. While she and Charles still keep a distance from each other, that distance is less charged now. Calmer. The day will come when they speak easily to one another again – when they work together – and to her astonishment, she’s looking forward to it.

And Pyro’s Brotherhood has been shattered, leaving behind those she most wanted with her all along.

Her time in the frozen north is no longer mournful. If she could just change shape – or even know when that day was coming – Raven thinks she might actually be having fun.

In the makeshift dining hall, where everyone breakfasts over the same damned instant oatmeal they’ve been living on most of the winter, Raven slips onto the bench beside Beast without her old self-consciousness; finally, it feels right to her that she should be here with them. A few people exchange glances, and Wolverine looks grumpier than usual, but it’s no big deal.

“—yet to me it seems a risk,” Colossus is saying. “Yes, we can get in and out in the Blackbird, but surely the Chinese will know who is responsible. Will they not strike back?”

“It’s highly unlikely,” Beast insists. He pokes his oatmeal with the spoon, as glumly as might be expected from 300 pounds of solid muscle expected to live mostly on packets mixed with hot water. “Though I expect them to be extremely displeased, it will be obvious that we acted without government sanction from the US or Canada. China’s anger won’t extend so far as taking military action against a major Western nation.”

“Still, we will be very much exposed.” Colossus frowns, and it’s easy to imagine the metal that lurks within the surface.

“We’ve got two choices,” Wolverine says. “We’re exposed or we’re hiding. Don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had about enough of hiding.”

“And once we’ve re-emerged, we can rebuild our presence in the world,” Storm says. “Show ourselves of use. Begin policing the remnants of the Brotherhood … though perhaps we should call them by another name now. We want to reclaim our independence and our rights _and_ the public trust. That last is going to be harder after we’ve made a military strike, though.”

“Forget the public’s trust,” Raven says. “First we need their respect. Standing up for ourselves is the only way that’s ever going to happen. If we do it without bloodshed, they’ll know we’re not making war on them.” It feels weird to admit that avoiding bloodshed serves a practical purpose, but there you go.

“Some of ‘em will look for a fight no matter what we do,” Wolverine growls, “but I hear ya.”

Which, coming from him, is as good as an olive branch. Some others at the table – Rogue, Shadowcat and Iceman – exchange glances, but say nothing. Maybe Charles and Erik are right about this unity thing.

Beast is obviously pleased by her acceptance into the fold. “Seems like old times.”

“I’ll say.” Her smile turns wicked. “The dreams are just getting hotter, aren’t they?”

Everyone at the table looks confused … except Beast, who rubs his chin, abashed. “Ah. I was wondering. Not just me, then.”

“Probably everybody within miles,” Raven says between bites of oatmeal. “I thought it would die down after the first couple of nights, but not so far. This must be the honeymoon phase.”

“Excuse me,” Rogue says, as close to politely as she gets with Raven, which is to say not close at all. “What are y’all talking about?”

“Charles and Erik. The dreams.” Raven glances between them. “Oh, come on. You guys haven’t caught on?”

Shadowcat shakes her head; her confusion appears to be shared by the entire group – except Beast, of course, and Storm’s eyes are getting wider. At least one of them is bright enough to understand a hint.

For the sake of the others, Beast clears his throat. “Well. You see, during the first flush of the Professor’s relationship with Magneto, the psychic phenomena were often – rather striking.”

He’s much too delicate for his own good. Raven finishes for him: “Sex dreams. When they’re really into it, which they are now. Don’t tell me you guys haven’t noticed.”

She wishes she had a camera for the next moment, because it would be a perfect illustration of what shock looks like on each of their faces. Shadowcat blushes brilliant red, and Wolverine scrubs at his hair like he wants to get the thoughts out of his head.

“Wait,” Iceman says in a small voice. “That was for real, back then? Professor X and Magneto? I thought that was just, like, a story to mess with our heads. An urban legend or something.”

“Real,” Raven says. “And not just back then, any more.”

Storm’s mood is blacker than the others. “You don’t know that they’re –you don’t know for certain. They share a house, but it’s not like that.”

“Oh, it’s like that,” Beast says. “The dreams are rather telling.”

“Did y’all not know?” Rogue genuinely appears puzzled. “Not about the dreams – I mean, I had no idea – but the rest? I thought everybody realized they were, you know, together again.”

“How do you know, Marie?” Iceman replies.

“Well, for one, I’ve been in Magneto’s head, because of Liberty Island, so I always knew they used to be, well, you know. Then the Professor and I talked about it – ”

“You what?” Shadowcat stares at Rogue. “You asked the Professor about his _sex life_?”

“No! I mean, not directly. But we talked. They’re definitely together.”

Why are they all so astonished? Raven has always realized their relationship never truly ended; she’s seen Erik after one of their stolen nights, mood blacker than ever, his isolation impossible to penetrate. On a handful of occasions, she even impersonated Charles in his bed. It began as a kind of cruel joke – Erik had been difficult, and her troublemaking side had taken over – but to her surprise, Erik had gone for it, and the masquerade turned her on. She found it titillating to inhabit the skin of someone who had dominated her thoughts for so long, achieving her own power over him, and discovering the sensuality of that body, albeit in a different way than she’d once planned. But after a few times, Erik refused and asked her never to try it again. He wouldn’t say why, but he really didn’t have to.

“This is not a good idea,” Storm says, like it’s any of her business.

Beast sighs heavily. “Ororo, the connection between them goes back decades. They fell in love during the Kennedy administration, for heaven’s sake. Nothing we say or do now is going to make a difference.”

Storm insists, “But we need him to be objective – ”

“When it comes to Magneto?” Beast harrumphs. “That’s never been the case, and never will be.”

“And vice versa,” Raven adds. Is she actually sticking up for Charles? If this counts, then yes. “So relax. Enjoy the dreams. At least they haven’t torn up the plumbing again.”

Everyone again looks confused, even Beast this time. He’s the one who says, “The plumbing?”

“Oh, come on. You remember the night all the pipes burst, right?” Water had come spraying out of every faucet and spigot, even a couple of the bathroom walls. She remembers Armando chasing Angel through one of the sprays, both of them shrieking with laughter. Remembers Erik and Charles in their robes, hurrying into the hall, rumpled and still breathing hard. “Erik nearly pulled the metal out of the walls. Charles must have outdone himself.”

Beast’s ears fold back. “That was Magneto?”

“You didn’t realize?”

“They said it was a problem with the drains – ”

“You bought that?” Raven starts laughing and can’t stop. Some of the others are amused too, despite themselves. It’s the best day she’s had in a long time.

**

It remains the best day until two weeks later, when they’re prepping the mission to China.

“Level your weapons,” Wolverine says. Smoke drifts up from the cigar clenched between his teeth. “Keep that lower hand steady.”

The tranq guns they’ve procured don’t feel as heavy as Raven would have expected, but she likes the way her gun fits in her hands.

She is, by default, a member of the so called “Cured brigade” – a group of people who are willing to get hit with the Cure, or who in battle get hit, and are learning to fight by conventional methods. They’ll be the front line of defense, the ones who cover extra-powerful mutants like Storm or those who can’t fight while Cured, like Wolverine himself. The idea of having power – real power – while in her human skin is as exhilarating as it is alien.

“Show me what you can do,” Wolverine says.

They fire – darts loaded with water instead of tranquilizers, so they get the heft right without wasting drugs. Raven hits the bulls-eye the first time.

“Nice work,” says Shadowcat, the same way she’d say it to anyone else.

This is how it begins, then. First she’s grudgingly allowed to stay with them. Then she is slowly given more acceptance. Finally, she gains responsibility. The idea of being hit with the Cure again is distasteful to her in the extreme, but Moira thinks it might not even affect her at this point, with her mutant genes still mostly inactive. So her powers will still return soon. When that happens, Raven realizes, she will again be one of the X-Men.

That’s not something she ever wanted, really. But Raven decides it’s not the worst place to end up. Beats being human, anyway.

Soon she’ll go back to the mansion she once called home. It seemed so beautiful, so inviting, when she first glimpsed it as a small, hungry girl. The people who lived inside would have food, tons of it, and maybe even a fireplace. And in her childish mind she’d been sure lots and lots of people lived there, so there would always be someone she could masquerade as …

She feels it. It’s the way her skin itches, sometimes, when she takes the form of someone much larger than herself – stretched and dry. Raven looks down at her hands around the gun and her eyes open wide as she sees her fingers flicker blue.

 _It’s happening!_ Immediately she tries to shape them, or at least to let them go blue once more, but the brief moment has ended.

No matter. She knows now that the end of her imprisonment in this human skin is drawing near. Raven grins as she levels her gun once more, ready for the next round.


	27. Logan

Though Logan knows every bit of it already, he hears the Professor’s announcement the same way every single other mutant on Earth does. Every thought he has seems to dim – not vanish, just get less distinct – as the Professor’s voice fills his head, somehow in every language Logan speaks at once:

 _If you can hear this, you possess the mutant gene, and your powers have at least begun to manifest. If you have already received the Cure, chances are you can hear me anyway. That’s because the mutant gene remains within your body – and also because the Cure’s effects are neither true nor permanent. Your mutation has not been reversed, merely masked._

 _My name is Charles Xavier. I am one of a group of mutants who believe that our differences are gifts to be cherished and used for the benefit of mankind, not denied or erased. We intend to take immediate, effective action to see that no mutants will ever again be made to take the Cure, and to unify our people as a social, political and military force._

 _If you wish to join us, all you have to do is call out to me in your mind during the next hour. I will hear you. If you require assistance to reach us, that assistance will come to you as swiftly as possible. If you are able to come to us on your own, I will instruct you how to do so. Perhaps many of you – most of you – will want more than one hour to consider if or when you wish to come to us. Take as long as you need. If you call for us, I will know._

 _But we need as many of you as can come to us soon. Humanity is on the verge of eradicating our race. We can stand stronger together._

 _Difference is nothing to be ashamed of. Your difference is your uniqueness and your gift. Even if you’ve taken the Cure, even if you told yourself it was for the best, chances are many of you sensed you were giving something away, something irreplaceable. The Cure stole that from you._

 _Join us. We’ll steal it back._

His mind brightens anew, and Logan shakes his head like a dog shaking off rain. “How does he do the languages thing?”

“What languages thing?” Marie says, but she’s not really paying attention. Fine by him. Since she’s copiloting the Blackbird, he’d rather she focused on that.

The plane swoops through the sky over China, so high that Logan heard Beast use the word “suborbital.” Beast’s mostly handling the approach – he designed this bird, knows it better than anyone – but when it comes time for them to hit the plant, Beast will be on the ground with them while Marie holds it steady.

Logan’s ears begin to tighten with pressure; Bobby starts offering everybody chewing gum. Somehow Logan can’t see charging into some Chinese factory while blowing bubbles.

“I never heard Charles’ voice in my head like that until now,” says Raven, who’s also on backup. Logan wouldn’t want to guess how much the temperature’s gonna drop when it’s just Raven and Marie in here. “Is it always so – total?”

“Chuck talks, you’re listening.” Logan glances sideways at her. “The guy’s never projected into your head before?”

“I asked him not to. This time I guess he couldn’t help it.” How Raven’s different from the other seven billion inhabitants of this planet, who don’t get any choice in the matter, Logan doesn’t know. Doesn’t much care, either. They’re diving lower now, and he feels his adrenalin rising.

Yeah, he’s been good – _well,_ he thinks, glancing at the long line of Marie’s neck exposed by her ponytail, _more or less_. He’s sat through committee meetings. He hid out when he wanted to strike back. He was as patient as he knows how to be, which isn’t much, but it was enough. Now they’re ready for action, finally, and Logan gets to go back to doing what he does best.

The Blackbird dives through the clouds, descending upon Chinese airspace from directly above. They’ll still come after them, but it’s going to take them a while to mobilize, and hopefully that’s all the time they’re going to need.

“Magnification,” Beast says as he taps a viewscreen. The manufacturing complex beneath them – the only one, as it happens, producing synthetic Cure – is emptying of workers, who are all strolling outside like naturally they decided as one to take a long walk in the middle of the day. “Excellent – the Professor’s taken care of them. Our progress should not be impeded.”

Logan wishes they could just fire missiles at the place and send it up in a ball of flame. Doesn’t work, though; they’ve got to pull some information from the computers so tightly protected that they couldn’t hack it remotely. Fifteen minutes, in and out, and nobody gets hurt.

The Blackbird drops almost straight down, slowing to hover gently to the ground. Then they spring the door and they’re out at top speed. Logan, who’s taking up the rear, uses his one split second to look at Marie. “See you soon, darlin’.”

“Take care.” She gives him a sidelong glance that reminds Logan how she’s likely to welcome him back. When he vaults out of the plane, he’s grinning.

Yeah, it’s more satisfying to use his claws in combat than against steel walls – but that doesn’t mean tearing up steel isn’t fun. Every locked door they run into gets opened like a tin can, jagged edges and torn metal left behind. Within minutes they’re in the heart of the factory, and there they split up. Kurt and Bobby head into the heart of the machinery; Bobby’s going to bust the works by freezing it, after Kurt’s done actually tearing out the center of it. Logan follows Beast, Kitty and Doug to the laboratory, where the real goods are – the information.

Beast bounds to a terminal and begins typing with surprising speed, given that he’s working with a Chinese-character keyboard and hasn’t trimmed his claws recently. Apparently he’s not fluent in the language but knows how to look for what they need; what he can’t find, Doug can.

“C’mon, Cypher,” Kitty says. She’s typing just as fast as Beast by now. “Keep knocking.”

“There’s a soft spot here.” Doug looks thoughtful. “Let me in – let me in – ”

Logan watches their backs, though it’s not like anybody’s walking in here after them, not after the Professor’s mind-whammy.

But his sharp ears pick up something in the distance – feet on the floor, but it’s gotta be Bobby or Kurt. Though Kurt doesn’t usually travel much on the floor when he’s in a hurry –

“How extraordinary,” Beast murmurs. “Not only have the Chinese isolated this information to an extreme degree – which is useful for us – but they’ve also done some theorizing about an antidote.”

“Antidote?” Logan sniffs the air. Right now he can’t pick up much besides disinfectant and the lingering scent of the workers who are still strolling away from the factory. Though some of those scents are more distinct than others –

“A substance that would undo the effects of the Cure quickly, rather than over a longer period of time. They were trying to anticipate such an antidote and figure out how to reverse it – cures upon cures, egads. But this provides a way for us to begin working on an antidote, and to make sure our formula is one they won’t predict … ”

Some of those scents are way too strong, and getting stronger by the minute. Logan ignores the slashes of pain across his hands as he extends his claws again. “We’ve got company.”

“Impossible,” Beast says. “The Professor’s telepathic suggestion would have sent everyone away.”

“So who’s running toward us now?”

Kitty and Doug jerk their heads up from their work, alarmed. Beast doesn’t reply, because by now he can hear it too. As Logan would have expected, he redoubles his efforts at the computer – first things first. The kids do too. That leaves the fighting to Logan, which is fine by him.

It’s only three guards – but they’re mutants.

Low-level mutants, from the looks of things: They’re armed with guns. But Professor X only looked for humans in the factory, which means it’s not cleared, and Logan’s finally got a fight on his hands.

About time.

He leaps forward, above the first spray of gunfire, raking his claws through the nearest guy’s gun and turning it to so much scrap metal. An elbow to the jaw sends that guy crumpling to the floor: one down.

Then pain rips through his left arm, and Logan yells as he staggers backward, hot blood gushing against his side. They got him; too bad for them that won’t stop him.

Swinging his good arm forward, he manages to clothesline the second guy, then shove him up against the wall. The third guard is lifting the gun to fire again, but he’s aiming at Beast, not Logan – and there’s something different about that gun –

Logan brings his fists down on the weapon a moment too late; he hears Beast cry out in pain, and a heavy thud against the floor. A roundhouse finishes the guard for now. Clutching his still-healing arm, feeling one bullet work its way out between two fingers, Logan runs into the lab –

\--to see a totally ordinary middle-aged man lying on his back as Doug pulls a dart from his shoulder.

Logan’s eyes widen. “Beast?”

“Less beastly than usual, but yes.” Beast gets to his feet, winded but otherwise all right. His coverall hangs loose on him, and suddenly it looks weird that he’s barefoot, but otherwise the Cure hasn’t made much difference in his case. “Looks as though I’m destined for the Cured brigade. Thank heavens they hit me with it instead of you.”

“Can you still get the goods?” Logan gestures at the computer, and is met with a withering look.

“My intelligence isn’t part of my mutation. At least – I sincerely hope it isn’t. I suppose we’re about to find out.” He returns to the keyboard, his typing clumsier for a moment, but Beast adjusts, and grabs the portable drive only seconds later. The grin that spreads across his face makes it clear: Human or mutant, Beast’s mind is still fast as lightning.

“That’s it,” Kitty says with a grin. “Got it. Let’s go!”

As they run back across the grounds toward the Blackbird, Bobby and Kurt are just ahead of them. Most of the factory workers are in the distance, still completely unconcerned about the enormous plane on the property or the mutants dashing into it. But there are other guards running out now, no doubt mutants too, and Logan really doesn’t want to end up a 600-pound lump in a Chinese jail.

The engines whirr into life as Beast vaults through the door, Doug and Kitty only a few steps after. Logan’s right behind them, but there’s a guard right there, lifting his gun and there’s not going to be any dodging in time –

Then the guard screams.

Logan turns behind him just in time to see a velociraptor; it screeches, an unearthly sound. His brain empties out of any thought but _Oh, fuck._

What the hell is going on? He doesn’t know and can’t imagine. But animal instinct is a big part of Logan, and instinct drives him to leap for the plane door. The raptor jumps after him just as it takes off, and clears the distance. Logan scrambles backward, almost into the equally startled Kitty and Bobby … just as the velociraptor shrinks in size, face flattening, claws shortening to fingers, and tan skin fading to blue.

“That’s better,” says Raven. Her clothes lie on the floor, abandoned, apparently for good. “Expanding like that is always a stretch. No pun intended.”

“Raven?” Beast says.

“Mystique,” she corrects him. Apparently she’s reclaimed her name along with her mutation.

“My heavens.” Beast starts laughing. “Beautifully done.”

“Improvisation is a specialty.” She smiles, her teeth bright against her midnight face.

“What is going on back there?” Marie yells, never taking her eyes away from the Blackbird’s control panel as they soar upward, hopefully out of reach of anti-aircraft missiles.

Logan walks unsteadily to her side. “We got the goods, some guards nearly stopped us and Cured Beast, but then Mystique got her mojo back and turned into a dinosaur, which kind of saved the day.”

Marie opens her mouth, then shuts it again, because what can she say? But he sees laughter hiding beneath her expression. When she puts it over to autopilot and turns her head toward him, though, her expression changes; he realizes he’s gory with his own blood all the way down his side. In an instant she’s halfway out of her seat, hands hovering just above his injury. “Oh, my God. Logan – ”

“I’m fine. C’mon. It’s me. Got no choice but to be fine.”

She nods, abashed, and he realizes she feels foolish. Realizes the others are watching, and all they see is a young girl with a huge crush getting emotional about a little blood on a guy who can’t be killed. Marie’s exposed in front of everyone else in the Blackbird, and she’s young enough to care.

So Logan gives everybody something else to see by bending close and kissing her – just long enough to leave no question in anybody’s mind about what’s going on.

He hears a small gasp from Kitty – but to hell with it. Nothing’s stopping them now. None of them. His thumb brushes across Marie’s cheek as he pulls back; she still looks abashed, but a lot more pleased about it now. It makes him smile.

Beast says nothing to Logan or Marie about their indiscretion, but instead speaks to Mystique. “Velociraptors were smaller than they’re shown in the movies, you know. And paleontologists now believe they were feathered.”

“Terror over accuracy,” she replies, unbothered.


	28. Charles

Charles is exhausted, but as happy as he’s been in years. Their plan for the strike in China unfolded nearly exactly as they’d hoped, and Hank’s information about an antidote for the Cure has opened up an entirely new range of possibilities. The response to his invitation has been overwhelming in every sense – keeping his mind that open within Cerebro for an hour was physically and emotionally taxing, almost to the limit – and it, too, lives up to his hopes. They’ve already managed to chart the locations of nearly 100 mutants eager to join their cause. Tomorrow they can begin the work of planning their retrievals.

Not every mutant was welcoming. Most were scared, and a few – self-loathing converts of Matthew Risman and his ilk – even reacted with hostility. A couple of those asked to join, meaning only to trap Xavier and his team; they had not thought through the fact that they wouldn’t be able to outfox a psychic. He’s not revealing their location to anyone who can’t be trusted.

The entire team is safe, and they report that Raven has regained her mutation. She must be so happy to be fully herself again.

Best of all – Erik is working beside him.

“We should encourage mutants to find one another where possible, and travel together.” Erik scrolls across the map on the computer, drawing a trapezoidal shape around a cluster of mutants on the Pacific coast of South America. “Safety in numbers, not to mention logistically it would be far less complicated.”

“And it would begin building team dynamics,” Charles says, rubbing his temple. Erik, less weary than he, remains fully absorbed in the task before them. His complicated, multi-layered mind finds some serenity in this sort of labor; enthusiasm has erased years from his face. If the stakes weren’t so high, Charles would swear Erik was having fun. A small, fond smile plays upon his lips, and he indulges the impulse to briefly lay one hand on Erik’s arm.

Erik glances over, concerned. “You’re tired.”

“Of course.”

“Cerebro – it was too much for you.”

“Not too much. To my limits, not beyond. And it’s not only that.” He gives Erik a stern look, which is undermined by the smile that won’t go away. “You see, I hardly got any sleep last night.”

“How horrible for you. Whatever kept you up?”

“I thought you were beyond making double entendre.”

“You overestimate me.”

“Hardly that.”

Their mouths meet in a soft kiss, then another. Charles breathes out, almost a sigh, as Erik’s hands stroke his shoulders. Erik murmurs, “Why don’t you lie down for a while? I can keep working here. Perhaps Storm could provide further assistance.”

“I don’t need to lie down. But my concentration is slipping,” Charles confesses. “Maybe a brief walk outside. The snow’s packed down, the temperature’s a little higher – it’s a good day for it.”

He rises, one hand to the small of his aching back, and has to brace himself for a few moments against the table. Erik stands beside him, forehead furrowed with concern. “Charles, are you sure? Perhaps you should wait.”

Charles shakes his head no as he puts one hand on the cane he’s been using most of the last week. “I have a feeling that I’d better not wait too long.” Erik’s expression darkens, but Charles kisses him quickly, refusing to be sad. He repeats, “A brief walk. It will clear my mind.”

“All right. I’ll have some preliminary timetables for you when you return.”

How natural it feels to leave Erik in charge of this. Forty years’ divide between them, and yet they’ve stepped into parallel tracks again without missing a beat. Charles smiles into the sunlight overhead, so brilliant that its reflection against the snow is nearly blinding.

“Professor! Professor!” Some of the smaller children are playing at the far edge of the wider clearing; they wave, eager for him to join them. Although he’d imagined a more solitary stroll, he knows how they like to be watched and praised. It’s a pleasant way to spend half an hour.

So he goes to them, and they show him the best sledding hills and ask when it will snow again and jabber on eagerly about everything and nothing at once. Their minds are like butterflies at this age – fluttering that way and this, all vitality and color and no direction, more fragile and more beautiful than they will ever be again.

A snowman has been built farther back among the pine trees, and Charles willingly walks with them to see this marvel for himself. His cane steadies him in the snow as he holds one hand up against the glare of the ice. The shade from the pines is welcome once they enter it.

“Look, Professor!” Noemie’s pink pigtails bounce as she wriggles with excitement to show off the snowman – which is, Charles realizes, a snow-Logan. The scowl has been faithfully reproduced with a bit of black scrap rubber turned down, the head has two points meant to suggest his wild hair, and a trio of sharpened twigs jut from each arm. Charles can’t help laughing out loud. “It’s good, isn’t it? Will Logan think it’s funny?”

“He’d better,” Charles says, chuckling.

And then the smile fades from his face as he realizes he and the children aren’t alone.

Had his mind not been so tired, had he not been so engagingly distracted by the children, he would have felt them before – intruders, perhaps a dozen, human and closing in fast. They’re here to do harm. Standing amid the shadowy forest, Charles can’t see them, but he realizes at least some of them can already see him.

“Children,” he says, “let’s play a game. Everyone, quick – sit down in the snow!”

They all plop down; Charles uses his cane for a controlled fall, and as he slides into the snow, he throws the illusion around them: Transparency, silence and endless soft drifts of white.

Within the children’s minds, he says, _Everyone be very quiet. Not a word. Not a move._ Charles makes it important, but not frightening – still, perhaps, the rules of the game. They grin as they comply.

Those smiles fade as the men come closer – their dawning fear breaks Charles’ heart – but they don’t move, at least not enough to disturb the illusion Charles has created.

“They were here,” a distant voice says. “Didn’t you see them?”

“Thought I did, but – maybe it was a deer or something.”

“Wasn’t any fucking deer. They’re around here.”

They are wearing white outdoor gear, but not uniforms; this is no military force. But they’re armed – with Redemption Rifles, and real guns besides. This is a Purifier militia.

 _We knew this could happen,_ Charles thinks. _We all knew it could happen from the day Logan was hit with the Cure. Why didn’t we move from this location that moment?_ Cerebro, of course – and that matters – but he could have been brought back to use Cerebro, or he and Erik alone could have stayed on. They put up patrols, but of course the patrols weren’t out today, because so many people had other jobs to do. Now all the remaining students are at risk, beginning with the smallest.

 _Stay quiet,_ he says to the children. _It’s all right._ Charles hopes it’s not a lie.

The militiamen come closer – within thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. Charles has to subtly direct their feet so that they don’t trip over him or any of the children. He badly wants to call out to Erik’s mind, or for that matter Storm or Colossus or anyone else, so that they could be helped. Erik is more than powerful enough now to rip those rifles from their hands. Tired as he is, though, Charles has no strength for more than this illusion, which for the children’s sake must be flawless.

“It’s like hunting quail,” one of the Purifiers says. “You gotta flush ‘em out.”

With that, he fires his rifle into the ground, only a few feet from Noemie.

The children all jump; only by clamping down on their minds hard is Charles able to keep them from screaming. Even then, only the children’s trust in him allows him to succeed. His influence is far too weak now. This illusion is far too thin.

 _Someone will have heard the shot_ , Charles tells himself, clutching at hope. _It was loud enough that someone will investigate.  
_  
The Purifier man repeats, “Flush ‘em out.”

His rifle swivels at random, toward Charles.

He doesn’t hear the blast, doesn’t even feel the pain. In the last moment before he loses consciousness, Charles thinks the blinding white light must be the sunshine against the snow.


	29. Erik

The far-away cracking barely registers in Erik’s mind: probably a tree limb outside breaking under the weight of ice. Hardly unusual. He doesn’t look up from his work, engrossed as he is in planning. Efficient as the Blackbird is, soon they’re going to need to get more jet fuel from somewhere. No doubt Charles would object to stealing it. What if they left some form of compensation behind?

He remains absorbed in such thoughts until nearly half an hour later, when he is pulled back to the here and now by the distant sound of a child screaming.

Erik bolts for the door, expecting at any minute to hear Charles’ voice in his mind – asking if he heard that, telling Erik what’s wrong, something, anything. But there’s no other voice, only his own racing thoughts.

The damned snow drags at his feet. Erik feels the thin veins of iron in the earth – too slender to be mined out, just enough for him to hold on to – and levitates himself above it, gaining speed, though he can only move so quickly through the trees. The children are still screaming, some of them crying, and he hears Colossus swearing in Russian. In the far-ahead distance above, a figure swoops through the sky – Storm, a blur of white on white as she chases after something – and then she cries out and tumbles down, dead weight.

“Somebody help!” shouts Northstar, and finally Erik reaches them to see the scene: Several of the smallest children, wailing in panic around a destroyed snowman and a stirred-up place in the snow that is spattered with blood. Next to the bloodstains lies Charles’ cane.

“Where is Charles?” Erik looks from face to face, though most of the gathering mutants haven’t been here much longer than he and look just as confused. “What’s happened?”

“They took him,” one of the children wails. “They shot the Professor and they took him.”

“Who?” Northstar says. “Who took Professor X?”

“Purifier militia,” Colossus says. His metal skin glints in the morning light. “It could be no one else.”

“What are you waiting for?” The Purifiers can’t be on foot; if they were, there would be a fight on already. So they have transport. Even if there were far more iron beneath the ground than there is, Erik couldn’t catch ground vehicles moving at full speed. “Pursue them! Why aren’t you after them? Answer me!”

“We were too late,” Colossus says.

The girl with pink hair sobs, “They told us if we moved or said anything they would kill the Professor. We didn’t want them to hurt him.”

And so they sat there, just sat, poor terrified little wretches, while Charles was dragged away. The emotion Erik feels thinking of it is too close to his worst memories.

Colossus swears quietly in Russian before saying, “Now, only those who fly could catch them, and the militiamen have the Cure. Nobody can go after them through the air, because of this. And we are without the Blackbird.” Behind him, Aurora lands, holding a dazed – and newly human – Storm, whose hair has gone black.

Erik wants to call them all imbeciles, fools, weaklings, but he knows Colossus is right.

“They knew his name,” sobs another of the children.

Of course they did. Charles has put himself out there, these past few years – the occasional media interview, political lobbying, and academic conferences on “the mutant question.” Charles, Beast and the late Jean Grey are probably the only mutants most humans in the Western world would recognize on sight.

And him, naturally, though not without his helmet.

Charles tried so damned hard to reach out, and all it did was make him vulnerable when they were attacked.

“I don’t understand,” Nightcrawler says, his tail twitching with agitation. “Why did they come to kidnap the Professor? How could they have known he would be here?”

“They didn’t.” Erik understands this as perfectly as if he’d brought the militia himself; he has learned the art of seeing through the eyes of his enemy. “It was a random group, on a random strike, probably linked to the ones who hit Wolverine at Alkali Lake. But when they recognized Charles, they were no longer content merely to take mutant powers away. Now – now they want to send a message.”

The answering silence is broken only by the sound of crying children. Erik’s eyes keep being drawn to the bloodstains in the snow.

“It doesn’t matter if they Cure us,” Storm says. Her resolve is especially valiant, considering that she must still be reeling from the change. “Even as humans, we can go after the Professor. I can still fight. We all can. We just have to figure out where they’re taking him.”

“They won’t kill him, at least not soon.” The calm settling over Erik now is more terrible than any rage he’s ever known. “As I said – they want to send a message first, and when they send it, we will hear. And then we will act.”

“We’ll be ready.” Colossus nods, as do most of the others. It occurs to Erik, as a stray momentary concern, that he probably shouldn’t have assumed the X-Men would accept his leadership in Charles’ absence, but for the moment, they have. Their shared loyalty to Charles Xavier has bound them together as nothing else could.

Erik forces himself to focus, to ignore the vast yawning fear opening inside him like a wound. “We need to monitor their communications. They’ll make this public in some way, and we’ll have to work backwards from whatever information that gives us. You can search for mentions of him on various networks, yes? Good. Begin immediately. And tend to the children.” His hand brushes briefly over the pink hair of the girl nearest him, but in reality she seems very far away. “I’ll be in the mine.”

Nobody questions him; they break apart to do his bidding, whether that’s running for their satellite installation or gathering the kids into their arms. Erik lifts himself from the snow again and levitates toward the mine’s waiting mouth.

Beneath the ground, strands of iron sing to him like the pipe organ of a Gothic cathedral, each a note in a great, complex chord only he can hear. Erik uses his hands to angle his body as he enters the mine; he has no lantern now, no torch, and so he is surrounded in all directions by the dark. No matter – he knows every stone, every surface, through a sense more sure than vision.

Metal surrounds him, infuses him, empowers him. He reaches out for magnetic north, which again burns for Erik steady and sure. For a moment, he remembers Charles smiling at him this afternoon, leaning over for a kiss that hardly lasted a second – but he pushes it aside. Right now, loving Charles means not thinking of him.

Once he is centered and still, he begins drawing slivers of metal from the rock. They are not exactly what he needs, but he thinks the alloy will be close enough. Erik’s concentration narrows to the fullest extent of his considerable discipline as he manipulates nugget after nugget, sheet after sheet, molecule after molecule. The metal shimmers against his skin, the reflection shifting and changing until it becomes what he sought.

He opens his eyes. The darkness of the cave surrounds him, but his other senses Erik to make out the shape hovering in front of him: His helmet.

The Purifiers will regret this day.


	30. Charles

Awareness creeps into the body before the brain: bright light, a hard chair against his back, the ache of his bound wrists behind him. People shouting, not in panic but in a kind of frenzy. Burning pain in his shoulder.

Charles’ first, semi-conscious thought is _How can it be so quiet while there’s so much noise?_

Then he realizes the silence is internal; he isn’t hearing anyone’s thoughts.

“Don’t bother right now,” somebody says, and a light that’s been bright against his eyelids goes dim. “We’ll do light checks tomorrow. Sound checks too.”

The Purifiers. The Cure. Memory sweeps in low and dark like a hawk, and Charles has to repress a shudder. Good God, the children – are they all right? He doesn’t hear any of them near. Instinctively he reaches out with his mind for them before remembering that he won’t be able to sense their minds or anybody else’s …

… except that he can.

It’s not his usual ability, not even close. Only by straining can Charles detect even the outlines of the minds around him, and he’s not sure he’d be able to manipulate anyone. The thoughts are there, though, in the form of whispers. They hit him with the Cure after they shot him – he’s sure of that – but somehow, it didn’t fully work. Charles retains a fraction of his power.

How is that possible? In a flash, Charles glimpses the answer. The Cure targets the mutant gene – and Charles has taken over a body born without that gene. He’s been rewriting his host body’s genetic code, bit by bit, but that process isn’t complete. His psychic abilities belong to this body because his former body willed them there, and the strength of his original mutation has proved more powerful than the Cure.

It’s not much to work with, but he must use what he has.

While he can still feign unconsciousness and dedicate his entire attention to it, Charles thinks of Erik. Remembers what it was like to be lost in his own mind, and yet to still have Erik as his pole star, his true north. If Erik found him once, he can do it again.

For a moment, the image in his mind’s eye goes misty, and then he’s staring into darkness, into a vision of Erik levitating deep within the earth, helmet in his hands.

 _Erik. I’m here._

And then the image shatters as someone grips his wounded shoulder, harsh and cruel, and he jerks upright, only barely biting back a cry of pain.

“Thought that might wake you up.” The man in front of him doesn’t seem to take any particular pleasure in hurting Charles, the same way most people would remain unmoved while chopping a branch into firewood. “Do you feel it? You are as God intended you to be.”

“You have dosed me with the Cure,” Charles says. “You wanted to take away my greatest gift.”

“Spare me the mutant-agenda bullshit,” says the man – Gordon, his name is Gordon, Charles can glean that much. “You’re sorry to be in God’s image? Well, then I’m sorry for your soul.”

 _Not too sorry_ , Charles thinks.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to film a Testament. You’re going to tell the truth about what you mutants are and what you do. Maybe when they hear it straight from the so-called peacekeeper, they’ll finally pass some laws that give human beings real protection.”

Charles realizes that the bright lights are for a camera. He remembers the ghastly films they call Testaments and knows the next one will feature his death. “If you think I’m going to read from a prepared script, confessing to imaginary crimes before you execute me, think again.”

“No script. But you’re going to admit everything that really went on at that so-called school of yours.” This man is so sure of his righteousness that he has never questioned whether the truth might not be as demonic as his febrile imagination suggests. “If you don’t – I warn you now, I don’t want to hurt those little kids. They’re young enough to repent. But getting the message out there is more important than anything else. If one must die to save millions, then that’s how it is.”

Alarmed, Charles draws in a sharp breath – but then he realizes Gordon is bluffing. None of the children were taken, though Gordon wishes they had been, has shouted at the Purifiers who failed to kidnap them. The children are all safely back with the X-Men; that means Charles can speak as he likes.

No script. Live. Footage that will no doubt be seen by millions.

This isn’t the opportunity Charles would have chosen, but it’s the one he’s been given.

“Don’t hurt the children.” He’s never had to try to act before, so he keeps it simple – rushed and unsure. Most people’s fear sounds something like that. “I’ll tell the truth.”

Gordon looks wary. “We’ll see what you do. I’m not sure you care one whit about those kids, but after the Cure, maybe some humanity got into you.”

Charles doesn’t bother answering; Gordon’s not even that interested in what he’ll say. He would like a confession, but he would prefer to browbeat Charles with his accusations, prove to the world that the Purifiers have power over one of the most famous mutants known, and then –

\--and then behead Charles Xavier for the world to see.

Beheading. Good God. The sheer physical terror of it is inescapable, but Charles breathes deep, fighting for whatever control he has.

So. If he isn’t found in time, it ends here, in a dingy room with bright lights on his face and his hands tied behind his back. He’s died before, at least he has practice, Charles tells himself – but that bravado doesn’t do much to sustain him.

He does better as he reminds himself of what matters most: The children are safe. The Cure is temporary, and even now, the X-Men are shutting down its production and claiming it for their own. His people will endure and prevail.

And Erik came back. He came back.

**

That night, they leave him in the chair. His shoulder hurts terribly, though more from muscle aches than the gunshot at this point. His legs have settled into an all-too-familiar numbness. Charles wishes he hadn’t spent his final hours of full mobility bound with rope, but it hardly matters. He wouldn’t be walking again in any case.

Pain and exhaustion pull him down into uncomfortable sleep from time to time, but he spends most of the long hours drifting in the peculiar twilight between slumber and waking. Sometimes he dreams with his eyes open.

He sees Erik in their cabin up north, surrounded by the X-Men, pacing and planning as they try to figure out where he is. Charles imagines that he’s standing in the middle of their group, so why don’t they look up and see him? Erik does, once, but as soon as their eyes meet, someone drops something loud across the room where he’s being held. The ringing impact against the concrete floor jerks Charles awake.

The rest of the night is nothing but hollowness and shadows.

**

They’re oddly polite to him the next day, apologetic even within their own minds. Someone helps him use a portable urinal. Someone else brings him a cup of water and sections of a peeled orange. Amazing, how good an orange tastes when you haven’t eaten in a day, and when you know it’s your last meal. Charles closes his eyes and lets the juice run down his throat.

When the hour comes, the lights all gleam back to full brightness, and Gordon takes his place to Charles’ side, his back to the camera to avoid recognition. A red indicator bulb blinks on the camera. They’re on.

“Peace unto you all,” Gordon says with no apparent sense of irony. “Today we announce the greatest victory of our movement. The Purifiers today captured and Cured the leader of the mutant unbelievers, Charles Xavier.”

Unbelievers in what? Charles wonders. In God? The Purifiers should talk with Kurt, whose gentle piety could never become so warped. But he says nothing, yet.

“His so called ‘school’ was a place where children were kept from the Cure. His ‘X-Men’ pretended to save the world from problems they themselves created. But by our efforts he sits here now, ready to confess his crimes and pay for them as judged by the word of God.”

“Yes, I am,” Charles interjects. Gordon seems surprised but not unwilling for Charles to begin, so he does. “My crimes. Let’s see. I have occasionally let members of the X-Men use one of the vehicles with my handicapped parking decal when I wasn’t with them, though only when they were in an extreme hurry. Though I don’t drive much any longer, when I did, I routinely broke the speed limit. Rarely drove under it, in fact. And for quite a while in the 1980s, at the mansion, I’m afraid we stole cable. I only allowed it at first because the children wanted to test their technical skills by proving they could do it, but then we never got around to taking it out and paying for it properly until we got the satellite dish fifteen years later. Maybe that’s not technically criminal, but it’s not on, is it?”

Gordon stares at him, outrage mounting. He’d thought Charles might back down, might contradict him … but he hadn’t expected to be mocked. “What are you talking about?”

“My so-called criminal activity.” There are other actions Charles has taken that skirted the law far more egregiously – forging paperwork and fogging the minds of officials to get mutants over difficult borders, for instance. Erasing Moira’s mind back in the beginning must count as interference with the duties of a federal official. So on and so forth. But he doesn’t owe the Purifiers that information or any other. “You asked me, I’ve told you.”

“You keep children from their parents. You keep them from taking the Cure that would restore them to normal lives.”

“The students at my school are there of their own free will. Those of them who have not been cast out by their families attend with their parents’ consent. And there are students with us who have taken the Cure and yet remain. It is a matter of each person’s individual choice, as it should be.”

“You encourage them to remain mutants. To deny their humanity and refuse to be made in the image of God.”

“Yes,” Charles says. “I do encourage them to remain mutants. Because I believe God has many faces. Male and female, gay and straight, of every race and with any mutation, or none.”

“There is only one God!” Gordon shouts, apparently believing he has caught Charles out in a weakness. “And he says to suffer the little children to come unto him. Why do you keep them from him? You want them to lead lives as outcasts.”

“I don’t. That’s your work. Mutants wouldn’t be outcasts if you didn’t spend so much time casting us out.”

Gordon’s confusion spirals upward, then shifts; his attack will change tenor, now. It becomes personal. “They said you could read thoughts. Influence minds. That you brainwashed the innocent.”

“My mutation makes me a telepath,” Charles says, remaining calm in the face of Gordon’s increasing apoplexy. “I can read minds. I can influence them. But I don’t waste my time victimizing the innocent.”

“You mean, you could,” Gordon says. “Before you were Cured and your power was taken away by the mercy of the Lord.”

Yesterday – the day before? He’s not sure how long he was out – Charles told the mutants of the world to take heart because the Cure was temporary. His final act must be to prove it.

“I can,” Charles says. “I can read minds, because your Cure isn’t a Cure. God appears to have a different sense of mercy than you do, Gordon.”

Gordon steps back, genuinely shocked.

“That’s right. Your name is Gordon Hall, and you live here in … Wisconsin.” Charles can’t get much, but the little he’s been able to glean over the last few hours should be more than enough. “Your wife’s name is Julia, and she doesn’t really understand what you’re up to, does she? You like the idea that she believes the Purifier militia is just a group of friends who drink beer and blow off steam. That she believes you’re on a hunting trip now. Though I’m guessing she’ll learn differently, thanks to this broadcast. You didn’t think that through, did you?”

“Get out of my mind!” Gordon moves, and fast as a flash, his gun is in his hand, the muzzle pointed at Charles’ head. “Don’t you brainwash me!”

“I haven’t, and I won’t.” No need to mention that he can’t. “You’ll notice I’m still tied to a chair with a gun being held on me. Proof enough that I’m not controlling your will.”

“You’ll brainwash us all. You’ll destroy us all, make us freaks like you.”

“You’ll prove otherwise if you shoot me,” Charles says. Though, to judge by the sheer murderous rage he feels coursing through his captor, the question isn’t _if._ It’s _when._


	31. Hank

“Steady, now,” Hank calls as the Blackbird shudders slightly in the sky. “We’re at the limit of our supersonic capability.”

“Don’t remind me!” Marie shouts back. “I don’t need the extra pressure.”

Really, he thinks she’s handling this fairly well considering this is her second trip as a copilot, especially since Hank has left the cockpit to perform other, even more sensitive tasks.

“You’re sure we’re heading in the right direction?” Logan demands of Magneto, who stands like a statue in the middle of the plane. Everyone still capable of fighting has crowded in together, Kurt practically clinging to the ceiling, Colossus allowing Aurora and Northstar to perch on his broad shoulders. Despite her injury, Ororo pulled herself together enough to take her place in the Cured brigade, but her eyes are mournful beneath her crown of newly darkened hair. “If these jerks try something with the Professor, we’re not gonna have much time to act.”

“We’re heading in the right direction,” Magneto says. His body is still; his face is emotionless. Hank would know that wasn’t genuine calm even if he weren’t aware of the relationship between Magneto and the Professor – there’s something uncanny about it.

“I believe that is correct. If I’m tracing the signal correctly, that is.” Hank can’t be certain. His hands are so small and useless. Why did he ever miss having bony human fingers? He’s clumsy with the computer keyboard, just when he must trace this signal as fast as possible. Kitty works with him only a few feet away, but there’s a tremendous amount of chatter to get through. The entire Web is abuzz with the Purifier boast that they have imprisoned a mutant leader and intend to “make him pay for his crimes.” This brazen violence would be outrageous to Hank at any time, even if it weren’t Professor Xavier at risk, but it’s all the worse because it’s happening when he can’t work at top speed. “Damned Cure,” he mutters.

“I know.” Mystique’s voice is so gentle with sympathy that it’s hard for him to recognize it as hers. She sits next to him, their fates neatly reversed. Her skin is blue, her power restored. He is human, his face transformed enough by age that it doesn’t feel as if he switched back to his old self, but became some other person entirely. His feet are cold and narrow, uncomfortable in shoes that seem to bind him; he finds balance difficult, and misses his nimble paws.

He tells himself sternly, _You’re thinking about irrelevant changes. You remain Dr. Henry McCoy, your brain is unhindered, and you are capable of finding the Professor. You have to be._

All this blasted Web traffic is fogging the source of the core signal; it’s been copied and broadcast and posted so often that even identifying the original is difficult, much less tracing it …

“Wait,” says Kitty. “Don’t trace. Triangulate.”

“Of course,” he whispers, tapping in new commands as quickly as he can. “When dealing with a multiplicity of data, one looks for trends. Gather the most-cited examples of the signal, determine the core locations, weed out major social media venues … ”

“We just passed into American airspace,” Marie says. “In another 15 minutes we hit Lake Michigan, which I’m just guessing is too far.”

Magneto straightens. “We’re close. Very close.”

“Bring her lower, Marie!” Hank calls.

“The signal’s going live!” Kitty pokes at one of the larger viewscreens in the plane itself, and they see a horrible video of the Professor, pale, bloody and clearly uncomfortable, tied up, good God what is wrong with people –

Even as the X-Men gasp and swear, even as Magneto draws himself up in either anger or pain, Hank turns his gaze back to his computer. He can’t help the Professor by watching this. He can only help by working fast and thinking faster.

But part of his brain still registers Professor Xavier’s bravery, the fact that he’s actually mouthing off to his captor – heavens, Magneto must have had quite a lot of influence on him these past few weeks –

Hank shouts, “I’ve got it!” A data peak on the northern outskirts of Milwaukee. “We’re almost on top of it, Marie. Transmitting to the cockpit now!”

The sudden shift in direction the Blackbird takes sends people reeling and makes ears pop; everyone except Magneto clutches for balance – no doubt he can stick to the metal floor. Given the short notice, though, Hank thinks Marie’s doing an admirable job.

“Beast?” Magneto never takes his eyes from the image of the Professor on the viewscreen. “I want you to cut into the Purifiers’ transmission.”

Hank frowns in consternation. Does Magneto want to spare his friend the degradation of being murdered for public amusement? He understands the impulse, but – “That would be unwise. Professor X is making a brave stand. The world should see it.”

Magneto nods. “The world has seen Charles’ courage. But now the Purifiers should hear what I have to say.” His eyes are unfathomably dark as he turns to Hank at last. “Cut into their signal. Make sure they receive instead of send for a change. Can you broadcast along the same frequencies, make sure the entire world hears us as well?” Almost in shock, Hank nods and starts doing what Magneto has suggested. Magneto grimly adds, “It’s our turn to create a Testament.”


	32. Erik

They will recognize him, because of the helmet.

When Beast points at him, Erik smiles into the dark square of the camera lens and speaks.

“I speak now to the Purifiers holding Charles Xavier. This is Magneto. No doubt you remember me. I am leading the X-Men toward your location at this very moment. We will rescue Xavier without human aid.”

From one corner, Moira MacTaggart shoots him a look, but Erik ignores this.

He continues, “For too long, you’ve run rampant, Curing mutants against their will and causing harm. Now your brutality has been turned against the single individual who has worked hardest to bring about peace between mutantkind and humanity. This cannot be borne. It will not be borne.”

The metal of the descending plane surrounds him, but Erik pushes his powers beyond that. He concentrates not on his fury at the men holding Charles, but on the way he felt when he woke up in Charles’ arms yesterday morning. It splits the surface he calls his self. He opens himself up to magnetic forces as never before – feels himself buffeted by the immense geomagnetic bands that coil the earth, feels the core solid beneath him as if it is the true planet and the rest is merely illusion.

 _Between rage and serenity,_ he thinks, and knows that he never fully experienced his true power before now. Charles is still acting within him, still summoning forth his best self.

“Hear this,” Erik says. “If you kill Charles Xavier, I will make sure that not only you but also your entire world feels the impact of his death. If you think I lack the power to do this, you are gravely mistaken.”

Everyone in the plane is staring at him – except Mystique, who looks both happy and unsurprised, and Rogue, who is even now settling the plane on the ground. Good. They’re here. Perhaps they can still save Charles –

Charles who will look on such threats with disgust, Charles who may abandon him for this, and yet if that is the price of protecting mutantkind – the price of rescuing Charles – Erik will pay it.

“You may have heard that I was Cured,” he continues. “This is true. But you also heard Charles Xavier explain that the Cure is not permanent. I’m about to prove it.”

He reaches down into the Earth itself; it reaches back into him.

The geomagnetic core burns hot like a coal in his heart.

Erik takes every fiber of his being, projects his spirit and his breath and his life outward, outward, ever outward – until the world turns upside down.

Literally, more or less.

“What just happened?” Wolverine mutters. Others in the plane are looking around, confused and disoriented but unsure why. “Did the plane swerve around?”

Kitty frowns as she shakes her head. “We didn’t move, but it felt like we did –”

Erik relaxes. Now that it’s done, it’s as natural to the Earth as anything else; he can leave it alone and his handiwork will remain intact for the next 250,000 years or so.

He hears the ring of triumph in his voice as he says, “The planet’s magnetic poles have now switched. Check your compasses and see for yourselves. I can do far more than this – and if you hurt Charles Xavier, I will. Now ask yourself if you’re ready to commit violence against mutants at the price of your own civilization.” He pauses, then adds, “It always was the price, you know. It only falls to me to prove it.”

The camera light goes off. Immediately Wolverine growls, “We didn’t sign up for your terrorist bullshit – ”

“You signed up to save Charles. We’ll argue the rest later.”

Iceman protests, “You switched the poles! There’s going to be – planes crashing, and stuff blowing up – ”

Erik replies, “You watch too many bad movies. Almost nothing is affected. Migrating birds are now flying in the wrong direction. Do you want to arrest me for that? Or would you rather focus on the task at hand?” Already Beast is pushing open the Blackbird door. Erik tears off the now-useless helmet; if Charles is still alive, still possesses some fraction of his power, Erik wants him to know they’re coming. “It’s time.”

The Purifier compound is almost pitiful, really – an old warehouse made of cinderblocks and rebar, a makeshift barbed wire fence surrounding the muddy field around it, and a handful of plastic sheds most people would use for their gardening equipment. Already the guards are shouting and going for their guns, but they don’t have plastic armaments. They are nearly outnumbered by the X-Men, who could probably take them without their powers. The Cured brigade is about to try.

And Erik remembers how to tear through barbed wire.

He rips the fence away along with the guns, sending them all skyward. Two Purifiers in front are almost instantly taken down with darts from Storm’s tranquilizer gun. One meaty-looking young man charges toward Erik with a baseball bat, only to be tackled with the full six hundred pounds of Logan’s weight. A jeep is driven toward them at high speed, but before Erik can toss the vehicle aside, Colossus barrels into it. Steel smashes against steel, and the jeep is the loser.

 _Charles,_ he thinks. _Charles, can you hear me? We’re almost there. So close._

There’s no answering flicker in his mind – but no matter. Charles can hear them by now. He’ll hear the tearing of metal and the cries of his captors, and he’ll know that Erik is about to save him. That must be how it is.

It is unthinkable that Charles cannot hear him.

It is impossible that they have taken his head.

If they have – if the impossible is possible – the Purifiers in this compound will be able to scour the Book of Revelation without finding words for the fury of Erik’s vengeance.


	33. Marie

Why didn’t she train with the Cured brigade? Marie wants to rip her hair out in frustration. Eventually she would have gotten around to practicing with the tranquilizer guns, but instead Beast had her focus on her flying lessons. Which would be great, except that now, while the Professor’s life hangs in the balance, her job is to just sit in the plane.

Marie can’t just sit in the plane.

As she unbuckles the straps of the pilot’s seat, Dr. MacTaggart says, “What are you doing?”

“I have to go in there. If there’s anything I can do, I need to do it.”

“You need to be available to fly the Blackbird,” the doctor replies, which makes sense. “You think I don’t want to be in there helping Charles? I do. But I know I can’t be of any use to him after the battle if I get my head shot off during it.”

Young and untrained as she was, Rogue was one of the deadliest weapons in the X-Men arsenal. Now she’s like Dr. MacTaggart – no, not even that good. She remembers Logan telling her that the doc was a dead shot the first time she ever picked up a gun, during a Cured brigade training session, when she joked that she must have been a sharpshooter in a past life. Marie hasn’t even held a gun besides her granddaddy’s broken, unloaded Civil War pistol.

Once again she feels that crackle under the skin – the potential for her power – but she’d still have to dive deep for it.

 _Stop it,_ she thinks. _You don’t have to decide anything right now. You just have to be an asset instead of a liability. You’re an asset by waiting to fly the plane. It just_ feels _useless and worthless and totally chickenshit._

“I hate this!” She smacks her hands against the armrests of her seat.

“I do too.” The doctor’s voice is low and soothing, as if she were beside a sickbed. “I don’t think I’ll breathe easily until they get Charles into this plane where I can take a look at him.”

“I know – the video signal!” Marie goes for the viewscreen, which they’d cut off after Magneto went on his tirade about remagnetizing the world or whatever the hell it was he threatened to do. “They might still be broadcasting.”

“Surely not.”

But they are.

Professor X remains in the chair, still pale and exhausted, but still undaunted. All around him, the Purifiers are shouting at each other about the mutants invading their camp, fucking mutants have come to kill them, they’re past the fence, there is no more fence –

“We have a hostage!” The guy named Gordon has his gun aimed at the Professor’s head. He stares at the camera, glassy-eyed. “We are under mutant attack! If they’re listening to this – you should know that if you kill our men, we’ll kill yours!”

Unruffled, the Professor says, “I think they understood that when you advertised my beheading.”

Marie can’t bear it one second longer. She grabs a handheld and tucks it into her belt, so her hands will be free in the fight. “I know what’s happening in there and they don’t. Somebody needs to know what’s going on!”

Dr. MacTaggart says only, “Go!”

The battle outside the building is already pretty much won. The Cured brigade has added a few members, but the Purifiers have lost far more. As Marie runs across the muddy field, muck splashing on her boots and coverall, she sees Kurt swirling in blue smoke from one assailant to the next, striking so quickly that they push back at thin air. She sees Bobby in his ice form, skating along above the ground, creating walls of ice between them and any assailants with the Cure. A few Purifiers are making a bolt for a smaller concrete structure at the edge of the property – more weapons? Something else? – but a swirl of silver almost too fast to be seen turns out to be Northstar, who drops Logan in the Purifiers’ path. Even across the courtyard, she can hear the metallic snick of his claws.

So Marie runs toward the central structure. On the ground she sees an abandoned baseball bat; she reaches low to grab it without ever slowing down. Maybe it’s not the most high-tech weapon ever, but she’s ready to swing it smack dab into the face of that guy holding a gun on the Professor.

Nobody shoots at her. Nobody comes after her. The Purifiers seem to sense she’s not a threat.

Well, that was stupid of them, she decides. Because they pretty much just let her run right up to the door, and a baseball bat ought to take care of that real quick.

She swings it at the door, aiming for the lock. The impact jars her arms and shoulders, but she swings again, and again, bashing at it with all her might. Though the door itself hardly shows a dent, the doorknob shudders, then shatters. As metal parts slide apart, Marie jabs her fingers within – maybe it’s not so different from the car locks Logan showed her – nope, it’s not. The lock gives way, and she’s the first inside.

Magneto seems to appear out of thin air behind her. Quickly she says, “They’re threatening to shoot him right now. Looks like just the one guy from the video.”

“This way,” he says. “Charles is this way.”

 _How does he know? Do they have like some kind of gay psychic tractor beam?_ But Magneto found them in the Rockies, so there must be something to it. Marie follows him, feeling a little stupid to be the baseball-bat backup to a guy who just messed with the whole planet. Then again, somebody might come at him with a weapon that’s not metal.

They hurry down a cinderblock corridor. The first Purifier they see is a skinny guy in a hurry, who not only doesn’t come after them but also screams as he runs the other way.

But the next ones are made of sterner stuff.

Four of them, and one starts firing his gun immediately – shots ringing out in the narrow hallway, almost deafening her – but Magneto sends the bullets into the ceiling and pulls the men’s weapons away from them. Then a set of metal lockers bolted to one wall tugs free and slams into the Purifiers, pinning them to the floor.

One more guy, and he’s throwing something –

 _A grenade,_ Marie thinks, hurling herself backward. _Oh, shit._

Magneto flings out one arm, and the grenade sails into a side room – but it doesn’t go far enough in time.

The explosion rips through the cinderblocks. Cement dust and heat and light and a horrible roar fill the corridor, and for a moment Marie doesn’t know which way is up or down. Maybe Magneto is doing something to the world again.

But she opens her eyes, only then realizing she’d shut them, as rough coughs rack her body. The blast has taken out the whole length of that wall, and part of the outer wall behind it; Marie can glimpse a crack of daylight. The Purifiers are stunned, injured or dead. At any rate, they’re not getting up.

Neither is Magneto.

He’s half-buried by the rubble of the cinderblock wall. His face is creased in pain, but he’s struggling with all his strength to get out from under the debris. He can’t.

“Stone,” he says. With her ears ringing from the blast, it sounds like a whisper. “Useless against stone.” She tries to clear some of the broken blocks from him, but it would take her an hour to do it by herself. Magneto looks up at her, and there’s none of his usual arrogance, none of his condescension. Right now, he’d beg her if he had to. “Get to Charles.”

Marie had thought this would be such a huge decision when the time came. But it’s easy. It’s obvious. The itching beneath her skin stops feeling scary and starts feeling wonderful. It’s like watching the first sparks from kindling begin a fire.

She didn’t get to kiss Logan one last time, didn’t get to hold him close. That just about kills her. But if Logan were here, he wouldn’t hold her back. He’s always encouraged her to make her own choices – even when her choices took her away from him.

 _Goodbye, Marie._ She imagines it in Logan’s voice, even though she’s the one saying farewell.

That inner battle is fought and won in the space of a heartbeat. She holds out her bare hands toward him, stopping just short of his face. “Will you give it to me?”

In his state, her touch might kill him, but Magneto doesn’t look scared. He looks grateful. “Quickly.”

She reclaims her power one split second before she steals Magneto’s.

She seizes his face in her hands, and everything Magneto can do – everything he is – flows into her. Rogue cries out in pain, his pain but she has to feel it too, as her mind warps and bends to admit a reflection of his. She remembers his life in an instant, feels the enormity of his love for Charles Xavier, knows the purity of his anger. His power reverberates within her, more massive even than it was the last time on the Statue of Liberty. Is he stronger or is she? Both, maybe. All Rogue knows is that nothing can stop her from reaching Professor X now.

Just in time, she yanks her hands away. Magneto slumps on the floor, unconscious.

“For the record,” Rogue mutters as she gets to her feet, “I still hate your guts.”

Then she uses her new power to reach for the rebar lining the walls and uses it to levitate herself above the rubble from the blast. She levitates faster, still faster, until she has to think of it as flying.


	34. Charles

Charles doesn’t feel hope, exactly – hard to, with a pistol still aimed directly at his head – but his pulse quickens as he hears the battle move inside the compound itself.

An explosion rattles the building, and Gordon shouts, “The mutants are in! They got in!” A few of the Purifiers still paying attention to the broadcast promptly turn and run; the camera’s still on.

For the benefit of that camera, Charles says, “We don’t carry explosives. That was your men, not mine.”

But for the Purifiers to use an explosive device within their own compound, the X-Men must have breached the perimeter. Charles wishes for his power to return at full strength, so he can find out if they’re all well. And he badly wants to know where Erik is.

Gordon’s face is white; his thin lips are set in a rigid line. “Your mutant terrorist friends think they can bring us down, and they’re wrong. You hear me? Wrong. You say you’re a leader? You want those kids to die for you?”

“That would be a tremendous waste.” Hopefully Ororo or Hank will have heard that – no, they will have understood it from the beginning, surely they won’t have risked the younger ones –

“Okay, so, you’re the mutant leader.” Gordon brings the muzzle of the gun to Charles’ temple. The metal is cool. “You heard how Magneto threatened us. The whole world heard it, and they know what you people really are now. Your one chance is to tell them to call it off. Tell Magneto to stop his attacks on humanity and get your mutants to stand down.”

“No.”

Gordon’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“I will not renounce Magneto. I will not call off the X-Men. This isn’t an attack on humanity, Mr. Hall. This is an attack on you and your men, and I’ll remind you that you have well and truly asked for it.”

Gordon’s eyes go wide, and for a moment he’s too shocked – too unable to comprehend that the barrel of a gun can’t solve his problems – for any of his other thoughts to be read. Charles takes a deep breath and tries to find compassion for this blustering, foolish man in front of him, who is so very angry but even more afraid.

“Listen to me,” Charles says. “You have been caught. The X-Men are here in force. Whether I live or die, you’ll be delivered to the authorities by sundown. If you kill me, the police will not see that as the work of God, but as murder in the first degree.” Charles gentles his voice, uses the few threads of sympathetic thought he finds in the mind before him. “You want to go home to your family someday. You want to apologize to Julia for not telling her the truth. The best way to make that happen is to put your weapon down now.”

“You think you’re so smart.” Gordon’s hand shakes on the gun. “You think you’re so fucking smart.”

He miscalculated. Gordon is too humiliated to fully embrace any emotion but anger. Charles tries once again to manage enough of his power to convince Gordon he doesn’t want to shoot, but that remains beyond his reach. All he can feel is Gordon’s rage working into froth, boiling over, his hand starting to press on the trigger.

Charles thinks of a long-ago night when he read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING aloud, and he closes his eyes.

Then he hears a strange noise – clanking and clicking, all of it traveling upward – and in a flash, recognizes it. It’s the unique, unmistakable sound of every piece of metal in a room being yanked away at once.

His eyes open to see Gordon’s empty hand clutching at the space where his gun used to be. _Erik,_ Charles thinks, and turns his head so quickly that pain lances through his injured shoulder. Instead of Erik, though, Marie flies in. Her hair streams out behind her, and a cloud of metallic objects hovers overhead. “Get away from him!” she cries as she lands close by. “Get out of here, period. And I’m telling you right now, you do not want to lay a hand on me.”

Is Gordon that stupid? No. He bolts, as do the final few stalwarts in the room. Charles lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, but the fear remains. “Where’s Erik?”

“Injured. He gave me his power to help you.”

Just as she must have given up her cherished humanity to save him: Charles nods, beyond any simple words of gratitude. Normally he’d send it at her, the fullest psychic embrace he could give, but now he finds himself at a loss.

She doesn’t care. Marie – Rogue again, now, stoops by his side; her eyes are bright with tears as she gestures at his wound, fingers a few safe inches away. “They hurt you. Oh, my God, are you okay?” This seems overly emotional to Charles until he realizes that Erik’s emotions have flowed into her along with his power over metal. For his part, he won’t feel right until he’s seen Erik’s condition for himself.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “A flesh wound. I’ll be well enough once I get out of this damned chair. Can you untie me?”

“Gloves.” Rogue runs one bare hand through her hair, briefly weaving the white in with the dark. “Gotta be some gloves around here someplace.”

More footsteps behind them: It’s Logan, claws still at the ready. “What, the fight’s over already?”

Poor Logan. He must be so disappointed. “Rogue has handled the situation beautifully. But if you could come untie me – ”

“I can do better than that.” A snick of adamantium through rope, and Charles’ bonds fall away in an instant. He slumps forward, numbness and exhaustion robbing him of his balance, and Logan catches him by his good shoulder. “Hey, take it easy, Professor. We’ll get you out of here. Marie, how’d you find him so fast?”

“My handheld was tuned to the broadcast. As I was flying through here, I heard sounds through the wall that matched what I was hearing through the speaker. Figured that had to be it.”

“Flying?” Logan blinks, then lets it go. “Can you find any bandages, something like that? Maybe you can patch the Professor up a bit.”

“I’ll look.” Her voice is very small. “But if I find them – Logan – you’ll have to be the one who touches him.”

The realization hits Logan so strongly that, even with muted powers, Charles feels the sting. But that’s hardly his most pressing concern. Nor is his injured state. Nor even is Erik’s condition.

It’s the red light on the camera, which is still on.

“Tell me, you two – did Hank cut this transmission at any point?”

Rogue frowns, then pulls out the viewer she has attached to her belt; it’s still on, showing what appears to be an image of them, only a couple moments delayed. Logan immediately becomes completely awkward, and Charles suspects the camera is approximately 30 seconds from being diced.

“Leave it for now,’ Charles cautions. “I have something to say.” He focuses on the camera. When he’s done television appearances in the past, the directors would say _Pretend it’s your best friend._ But thinking of the camera as Erik was rarely helpful. So he takes a deep breath and steps across the Rubicon. “Mutantkind is a nation of this world. We live within many borders, but that is what we are: a nation. We have an army. Today you can see that where you strike at us, we can strike back – and from now on, we will strike back. However, it is within your power to make peace. We ask for nothing more but equal rights. We ask the freedom to keep or discard our mutations as we choose and the freedom from fear that any other citizen can expect.”

Rogue and Logan are both staring at him, but neither of them objects. Had Erik made this stand alone, Charles suspects, they might have opposed it violently, merely because it was Erik. Once upon a time, he might have too. He and Erik drove each other toward unnecessary extremes. No more.

Charles finishes, “The Cure is temporary. We still live among you. We will always live among you. Please, let us live in peace. It’s up to you.”

Then he nods to Rogue, who snaps off the camera.

That speech took the last of his strength. Charles leans against Logan, who scoops him into his arms as easily as if he were little Noemie. “C’mon, Professor,” Logan mutters. “Let’s get you to Doc MacTaggart.”

“Erik too,” Charles murmurs.


	35. Mystique

Charles will go to war.

Mystique hugs herself against the chill; her real skin is better at regulating temperature, but even though it is warmer in Wisconsin than the Canadian Rockies, the chill is deep. No clothes, though, no coats – she is again her true and perfect self, and the world needs to see it.

Erik is his true and perfect self again too, and now maybe Charles is embracing his deepest potential for the first time in his life. Yes, he’s giving humanity one last chance, but she knows what those chances are worth. The great battle is at hand.

If only Erik will be all right …

Unable to endure the wait any longer, she treads through the mud toward the Blackbird. All around her is the aftermath of their battle. The human authorities haven’t arrived yet, so everyone is taking advantage of the time without fighting to get things in order. People are removing the Cure from the Purifiers’ stores, reclaiming it for mutantkind; she assumes they’ll burn it later – a great bonfire of celebration. So far nobody’s taking the rest of the weapons, but they’ll get to it in good time.

She steps into the plane to see Erik unconscious and pale on a stretcher – and beside him, Charles, clearly exhausted and bloodied but awake. Next to him, Moira fusses, “You got damned lucky with this wound, you know that? You’ll only be a few weeks recovering. A few inches in any direction, and you might’ve lost an arm.” Moira’s face is drawn. “What a thing to do to a paraplegic man.”

“You act as if I got myself shot on purpose,” Charles says gently. It works; Moira calms down enough to smile at him. Mystique vaguely remembers that she used to like Moira. Then Charles brightens. “There you are. Back to yourself, I see.”

“How is Erik?” Mystique says.

Moira answers her: “He’s going to be fine. That ankle is broken, and the bruising is going to be ugly, but his vitals are strong, so I suspect there are no serious internal injuries.”

Mystique steps closer to him, unable to trust Moira’s human reassurance. “Then why is he unconscious? Did he hurt his head?”

“He remained conscious after the explosion, so probably not,” Charles says. “We think it’s exhaustion from transferring his powers to Rogue. She often has that effect.”

“Since you two are seen to, and Mystique can keep an eye on you both for a few minutes, I’m going to check on Nightcrawler. Apparently he sprained his tail.” Deftly Moira snaps up her kit. “They never covered that in med school.”

Charles smiles. “They will someday.” As Moira walks out, Charles tries to use his good arm to push himself up a bit to talk to Mystique. After a moment’s hesitation, Mystique bends down him. If he had seen reason and come with them that day on the beach, would she always have assisted Charles like this? Yes, and she would have been glad to. Why does she only understand that now?

“Are you sure Erik’s okay?” Mystique repeats.

His face studies hers; how obvious her vulnerability must be. So is his, as he briefly strokes Erik’s silvery hair with his good hand. “He’s not injured seriously. Only terribly drained. He’ll need to take it easy for a bit.”

“Erik’s endured worse than that without slowing down.”

Charles smiles at her the way he did when they were small, and she’d said something he thought was cute but was very wrong. She’s nostalgic enough at the moment not to find it annoying. “He’s getting older, Mystique, just as I am. Our bodies don’t forgive us much any longer. We weren’t as fortunate as you, with a mutation that will leave you young, strong and beautiful for a long time to come.”

He speaks so casually, as if he hopes she’ll miss it, but Mystique knows it was deliberate. Charles called her beautiful. On one level she feels scornful of the idea that she’d be waiting for his approval, still, after all this time.

On another level, it feels … nice. Not the way it would have felt if Charles had told her that back when she so badly wanted to hear it, but pleasant, at least.

Mystique decides to go with that, just once.

That train of thought, along with the way Charles casually caressed Erik’s hair, brings her to something she’s been meaning to say for a couple decades now. “You know, you could have saved us a lot of trouble way back when if you’d just told me you were gay.”

With a sigh, Charles says, “Had I been capable of saying such a thing then – which I’ll admit I wasn’t – would you have been capable of hearing it? That was such a different time.”

Back then, everybody would have called them “homos” or “fairies,” words like that. But Charles and Erik could never have been so easily slandered, not to her. “I wouldn’t have loved you any less.”

“Raven.” The name slips out, so gentled by emotion that Mystique doesn’t even mind it. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” She thinks about taking his good hand, but settles for a brief touch on his forearm. “And you’re all right?”

“Mostly. I now have one fully useful limb out of four, but the arm, at least, I’ll get back. You see? We’ve all come through.”

It seems that they have.

Mystique leans toward Erik’s stretcher to study him more carefully for herself. With a jolt, she realizes that he is older. He is very nearly old. Somehow she has never allowed herself to fully take that in that before; even when his hair grayed, even when his naked body in her bed thinned, Mystique has always seen him as being very close to the man she first knew. For a moment, it seems that her Erik has been replaced with someone else, someone more fragile. The realization is unsettling.

She remains in a deeply contemplative mood as they make their trip home. There’s not room for everyone to go, now that they’ve loaded up so much from the Purifiers; a few people stay behind, including Wolverine and Colossus, with vague talk of “a mission” Mystique hopes will be as bloody as it is glorious. Wolverine’s a good person for that. Colossus has always struck her as being far too meek, but he’s the only one of them incapable of being touched by the Cure, when he wears his metal skin; that probably makes him good for work behind enemy lines.

That night is quieter than she would have expected. Instead of triumphing and celebrating, people are for the most part laboring hard. There doesn’t seem to be any mass destruction of the Cure yet, but Mystique overhears something about “Beast’s studies,” which explains that. He needs to take a look at the Cure first, the better to understand what their enemies used against them, before it can be obliterated. Still, just the presence of the stuff makes her skin crawl.

So she goes to Beast to see just how long it will take.

Mystique finds him mid-analysis, keeping himself busy while waiting on results and oddly unconcerned that he’s been turned into a human.

“It’s a blasted nuisance, of course.” He sits on the edge of his bed, amid a pile of shoes and boots – donated, apparently, by the other X-Men, so that he might find the perfect size for his ruined feet. Beast laces up the newest pair and frowns down at them. “My clothes hang on me like tents, and while I occasionally went without when I had my fur, now that I have only human skin – well. There are children present.”

“You must be so angry,” Mystique tries again.

With a shrug, Beast says, “Now that we know the Cure is no more than temporary, and we have the key to a potential antidote in hand, honestly, this seems like a mere annoyance.”

“An annoyance?” The words come out too loudly, and Beast stares at her. Mystique reminds herself that he’s not the one she’s angry with. “They tried to take away who and what you are. They tried to destroy you.”

“They did. But they failed. Not only that, but they provided the means for me to render the Cure all but useless. If the cost is a few weeks of looking strangely pink, well, that seems to be a fair trade.”

Fair? What about any of this is fair?

It occurs to her that Beast remains an innocent. She can see the echo of the boy he was in the man before her more strongly now, and not only because he once again wears the same face. Although Beast’s kindness during the past few months will always be precious to her, Mystique now realizes that he never understood her and never will, not even now that he too has to suffer the indignity of being human.

Beast stares into the small mirror on the cabin wall and runs one hand through brown, thinning hair. “Very strangely pink,” he mutters. “Caucasian human skin never bothered me when I was growing up, and I don’t mind it on anyone else, but when it comes to my own face now – I just don’t know. I keep thinking of ham.”

“I bet you’ll get used to it.” The bitterness laces her words. “I bet you’ll like it before it’s gone.”

But Beast is too distracted to hear anything but his own disjointed thoughts. “Still another twenty minutes to go on the Cure analysis. Blasted annoying to wait. And do you know, I can’t even pick up objects with my toes any longer? It’s ridiculous! How do you people manage?”

She tolerates only a little more of this before excusing herself and returning to her cabin. Her good mood returns as she lies in bed, dreaming of tomorrow. Erik will be better; he will no longer seem vulnerable or frail. The war will begin. And they will all be together as they should have been from the beginning.

**

The next morning, she rises for breakfast and strolls happily naked across the snowy courtyard, ignoring the stares of teenage boys. Mystique strides toward the dining hall – then stops in her tracks as she sees boxes being carefully loaded into their warehouse.

Boxes of Cure. They’re not being taken for destruction; they’re being put in safekeeping. It’s not a mistake. This is deliberate. This is Charles’ doing.

Mystique runs to the cabin Charles and Erik share – for now, that is, while Erik is too weak to protest. He won’t want to stay. If she has to, if they won’t let him go, she’ll carry him away from here in her arms. “Charles!” she shouts as she stalks through the door. “You lied to me!”

Charles is propped up on the sofa, a book in his good hand and a disquieted expression on his face. “I don’t think I’ve done that recently. What exactly is wrong?”

“The Cure. You’re not destroying it. You’re keeping it.”

“Yes,” he says, like it’s obvious instead of grotesque. “For those who actually want it, and to stop those who actually need to be stopped.”

“And you’ll decide who that is, won’t you?”

“We will. As a community.”

“You. You, Charles Xavier. You’ve never listened to anyone else, not ever – ”

“No, I haven’t,” he admits, which surprises her. “Which has to change. I realize this. But the Cure serves a purpose. It simply has to serve our purposes, mutant purposes, and no one else’s.”

Were he any less battered, Mystique would strike him. “Erik’s not awake yet, is he?” Charles shakes his head no, but she realized this already. This couldn’t be happening if Erik were back to himself. “How do you think he’ll react when he finds out? When he learns you want to keep the Cure that destroys us?”

Charles hesitates for a long second, so long she thinks that got through to him, until he says the words that take the floor out from under her feet: “Erik knows. We made this decision together.”

She wants to accuse him of lying. Charles will lie when it suits his purposes. But looking at him, she knows it’s the truth.

Erik agreed to keep the Cure.

That betrayal eclipses anything Charles ever did to her or could have done. It dwarfs the moment Erik left her, Cured and helpless, in the wreckage of a human military transport. This betrays all of them, all mutants, everywhere? How could Erik agree to it? But she knows now. Erik has been made weak. Erik has become old. Erik has given in on the fight of their lives, the fight they gave everything to, and it ought to destroy her.

No. She won’t let it.

Mystique straightens. “You’ve – infected him. I thought he’d finally gotten through to you, but it’s the other way around, isn’t it?”

“We’ve met in the middle,” Charles insists.

“There is no middle ground!” she cries. “Not when it comes to this!”

They stare at each other for a few long seconds, and Charles looks so stricken she could almost believe he felt as horrible as she does, if he weren’t getting his own damn way in everything, just like he always does. At last he says, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“That’s not an apology.”

“It wasn’t intended to be.” Charles holds his good hand out to her – not that he can believe she’ll actually take it. He says only one more word, the name she now hates, the one by which he knew her: “Raven.”

Mystique turns and flees the cabin. She hurries through the clearing back into the woods. Her strength and speed are such that she can reach Loughlin City by evening; she’ll plot out what happens after that later. There’s nothing in the mutant settlement she can’t leave behind.

Not even Erik. For decades she followed him, believing in his vision of their fight, in his courage and resolve.

The vision, courage and resolve were hers all along. Maybe the others should have been following her instead.

From now on, they will.


	36. Rogue

Rogue sits cross-legged on her bed, laptop at her feet. In one browser window is a collection of images – images of her, published today in every newspaper and on every news website in the world. In the other is her email, which includes notes from absolutely every human being she ever knew long enough for them to recognize her. She has read just one.

Open is the note from her mother, the first in months, and the only line that really matters is _We’re so proud of you._

Proud. Proud of their daughter the mutant. Rogue knows her mom well enough to be sure that’s not just an attempt to be polite, or what she thinks she ought to say. Momma means every word.

Though she’s been staring at the email for the better part of an hour now, it still seems unreal to her. Rogue wants to show it to Logan. When he asks her how she feels about it, maybe she’ll finally know.

But Logan’s been on the ground in Wisconsin with Colossus since yesterday’s battle. They were going to follow up on Gordon Hall and the local Purifier cell if the authorities failed to; when the government actually came through, they ended up meeting with some FBI guys for a while. A real meeting between equals, the Professor said, and while enough of Magneto remains within Rogue for her to be skeptical, she also knows Logan wouldn’t give a positive report if he didn’t feel damn good and sure about it.

This means she hasn’t spent any time alone with Logan since she reclaimed her powers – since she ended everything they had together in an instant.

 _Not everything,_ she reminds herself. _We were friends before we hooked up, and if Logan can understand why I did it, we can have that much at least._

The thought doesn’t comfort her much. Logan’s a bigger-hearted guy than most people give him credit for at first, but Rogue wouldn’t blame him for being a little upset. She never talked about this with him, at least not after they got together, so he had no warning. And if he hates the idea of them never touching again – well, she knows exactly how that feels. Last night, despite the successful rescue, Rogue cried herself to sleep thinking of how she’d never lie in Logan’s arms again, skin to skin.

Her throat tightens; she’s tuning up again at the very thought. So she resolutely starts in on the rest of her email, the best distraction she’s got at hand. There’s a note from Dionne, which Rogue clicks on right away to see a photo of her old friend – once again with magenta hair and cat ears. _See you soon!_ Dionne signs off, and it’s not just a phrase. She’ll be coming back.

Who else? Good Lord, Vickie Biffle wrote her. Vickie was homecoming queen and a cheerleader and had previously never so much as acknowledged Rogue’s existence. Now she’s acting like they were best friends. _It’s SO AWESOME that you’re famous! Do you think you’ll get a reality show?_

 _Some people_ , Rogue thinks.

Then the door opens and Logan walks in.

He didn’t knock; she hasn’t expected him to since the first night they spent together. Somehow it feels like that ought to have already changed. Logan looks tired as he tosses a paper bag on the table by the bed. “Hey, darlin’.”

“Hey.” Rogue pushes her hair out of her face. “How’d you get back so fast?”

“The Feds offered us a lift. Sign of good faith, they said. To figure out where we were exactly, maybe. The Professor says we’re outta here and back to the mansion in a few days, so doesn’t matter either way.”

“They said it went well.”

“I think so. Who the hell can say? But it seemed like the Feds were good and sick of that Purifier crap. I can tell when somebody’s scrappin’ for action, and they were. Worth a shot, I guess.” Logan sits heavily on the foot of the bed. “And I didn’t mind risking it, because I figured I needed to get back here to you.”

He’s not angry, not even a little. At first Rogue wonders whether she’s that easy to let go of – but no. Logan’s not like that. Maybe he’s determined to pretend that it’s no big deal, so this won’t be as tough on her. Nothing makes this easy.

She decides to be straight with him; he’s never failed to be straight with her. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to you first. Before I took my power back.”

Logan cocks his head, studying her. “It was your choice to make. Not mine, not anybody else’s. Same as it’s always been.”

“But it hurt you,” she says. “I just want you to know it hurts me too. So much.”

“Can’t say it didn’t give me a turn.” He breathes out, almost a sigh. “I’m gonna miss holding you against me at night.”

That’s about the mushiest thing Logan has ever said. Rogue can’t even look at him as she blunders through the rest. “My powers are tough to live with, but they’re mine. No. They’re me. If there were no way for me to ever use my powers to help anybody else, maybe I would have kept fighting the change back. Or maybe I’d just take the Cure again now. But I saved Professor X today.”

“Damn straight you did. Nobody else we’ve got could’ve grabbed that gun in time.”

Logan’s trying so hard to help her. Rogue wishes she could take his hand, but she removed her gloves when she came in – she’ll have to relearn old habits. “There have to be more ways to use my powers. I want to learn them. I want to do what I can to help us. All of us. We’re about to start fighting for mutant rights like never before, and I need to be a part of it.” She swallows hard. “But I’m always going to hate that it meant losing you.”

“Back that up.” Logan stares. “What do you mean, losing me?”

Rogue hadn’t expected him to question anything so obvious. “You said yourself – you can’t hold me anymore. We can’t have sex anymore. Even if you think you can, I don’t know, do without or whatever – that gets real old real fast. Trust me, I know.”

Logan does the very last thing she expects.

He laughs.

“If you think I intend to do without, you don’t even know me.” Logan puts his hands on her shoulders; even though her thick sweater, she can feel the warmth of his skin. It seems as cruel as his joke, and almost as shocking.

“So, what, you’re gonna date me but sleep with other people? No way.” Since when did he start assuming she had no pride?

“Whoa, whoa. Nobody’s sleeping with anybody else.” His voice gentles. “Why do you think I’m leaving you?”

Rogue wriggles free of his grasp. “Since we can’t have sex anymore! I know that’s not why Bobby broke up with me, not really, but it didn’t help.”

“How many times do I have to tell you – Bobby Drake may be a good kid, but he’s also a punk.” More softly he adds, “Have you been sitting here all this time, tearing yourself up about this? Well, you can cut it out.”

Something very like hope twitches inside her, but Rogue doesn’t let herself go there, not even in her own mind. “It’s a real problem, Logan. You know it is.”

Logan grins again, and there’s nothing gentle about it. “Plenty of ways around our little problem, darlin’. Daddy went shopping.”

He grabs the paper bag he brought in with him and fishes out gloves – not the long kind she used to wear, but tan leather ones, like expensive ones for motorcycle riding. The leather’s so thin and snug, it’s like a second skin. As Logan begins putting them on, he says, “How about you take your clothes off?”

Rogue knows her eyes must be round as the moon. “Logan – my power – ”

“My clothes are staying on.” He fastens the strap around one wrist, then the other, before bending his fingers to test the give. “You don’t always have to be the one wearing the gloves, you know.”

She can’t move. She wasn’t expecting this and feels like it’s crazy, like Logan has to change his mind any second now.

“Guess I’m not doing a good job of persuading you.” Logan’s voice is low and rough, just the way that sends shivers up her spine. “Let me try to do better.”

He slides off the edge of the bed and starts kissing his way up along her thigh, the pressure of his lips firm even through her leggings. Rogue gasps as he pushes her knees apart and drops one kiss right between her legs; his mouth is open, his breath hot through the thin fabric.

She starts to clutch at his hair, but no, she can’t. The possibilities and the impossibilities are all piling up on her at once; Rogue feels like she ought to stop this, except that her body’s responding to Logan the way it always does, revving up like an engine.

 _He wants this_ , she thinks. _He still wants this. Wants me._

Boneless, she flops back onto the bed, just as his leather-gloved fingers slide under the waistband of her leggings. Logan peels them away, underwear too, then goes for her sweater. Rogue has to wriggle to help him there, and then she’s lying on the bed with nothing on but her pink mesh bra.

She reaches for the clasp, but Logan pushes her hands away. When he lowers his mouth to her breasts, it’s astonishing how much she can feel the heat of his kiss even through the thin fabric. The pressure of his lips. The wetness of his tongue. Even his teeth are sharp through the mesh as he rakes them across her nipples, making her arch off the bed.

“You and Bobby were kids,” he murmurs against her curve of her breast as his gloved hand slides down her abdomen. “You didn’t know what to do because you hadn’t been around.”

His fingers cup her between her legs, his thumb finding the perfect place to circle.

As Rogue moans, Logan whispers, “Me? I’ve been around.”

Two fingers push inside her, and she remembers the way they were their first night together, how his eyes went dark with wanting when she fucked his hand. So she does it again, finding the motion with him. Logan adds more force to it, another finger, until he’s opening her up almost as much as he did when he was inside her. Rogue closes her eyes and gives into it, how he’s circling her just right, filling her up, bringing her down. For a few seconds she feels like she’s fighting for it – dizzy and reaching and almost almost almost but not there – and then she’s there, crying out as it pulses through her and blinds her to the world.

Logan massages her all the way through it, until she’s limp and panting on the mattress; then he pulls his hands away so fast it makes her whimper.

“Sorry,” he mutters as he stands on the edge of the bed and fumbles with a condom wrapper. “This is harder with the gloves on. I’ll get the swing of it.”

Then he unzips his jeans; his cock juts out, rock hard and blood-dark. Logan struggles a little more with the condom, but he gets it on. His shirt and jeans stay put, the jeans only open enough for what he wants to do. When his leather-clad hands seize her hips and pull her up to him, as he’s still standing, Rogue whispers, “Are you sure?” Even as she asks, she grips tighter with her thighs, wanting to stay with him.

“This is gonna work.” The head of his cock brushes against her, so good it makes her writhe. “Trust me?”

“Yes.”

And he plunges inside.

Rogue could cry for joy. Scream for pleasure. Logan’s inside her, filling her up just like he always did, thick and good as they start to move. She wraps her legs around him, and it’s fine, it’s just _fine,_ because she feels the denim of his jeans against her skin. He’s inside her but he’s safe.

Logan doesn’t seem to mind playing it safe, either. Anything but. He pumps into her, fast and relentless, daring her to keep up. She does. The angle is different but she likes it, blood rushing into her head as he thrusts deep and quick. He closes his eyes and bites his lip; that means he’s fighting for control.

She doesn’t want him to keep control. She wants him to lose it.

So Rogue ripples her entire body into every move, knowing he loves that. Logan groans; that’s right, she thinks, give in. He speeds up and starts swearing under his breath – and then he shouts out as he plunges deep inside and shudders. For a long moment she can only stare at him, ecstatic, blind and lost in her beautiful skin.

They slide apart, and he flops down on the bed beside her. Their bodies don’t touch, and he keeps his clothes on, but otherwise it might be any other night they’ve shared. “See?” he murmurs. “Doesn’t have to change. Not much, anyway.”

“That was incredible.” But it’s almost too much for her to wrap her mind around, the idea that this barrier she’s had around her all these years was no barrier at all. “And it is for you too? Really?”

“Yeah, really.” Logan’s head lolls over toward her, and he smiles. “Got more in that sack for us to try, and there’s more where it came from. Trust me, you’re gonna love latex body paint.”

Rogue could laugh. She could cry. “You really want this. Us. It wasn’t just – just because I needed someone.”

“You think I’m a hell of a lot nicer than I am.” He sighs as he rids himself of the condom. “Marie, I made up my mind before I ever took you out to see the Northern Lights that night. This whole thing, helping lead the X-Men, being responsible for the kids – for anybody – all of that. I didn’t like it at first. But then I figured, you know, I’ve tried running. Now I’m gonna try sticking around. I wanted to stay. Mostly I wanted to stay with you.”

“I think you’re a lot nicer than you believe you are,” Rogue says, arching one eyebrow. She hasn’t forgotten how to tease him. There’s not as much difference between Rogue and Marie as she imagined. “Ever consider that?”

Logan shrugs, then grins, then rolls over and kisses her – right on her lips, hot and sweet, just as long as they dare before he pulls away. The kiss hasn’t broken his smile. “I told you that first night, darlin’ – I’m not going anywhere.”

“Damn straight you’re not.” Her naked fingers find his gloved ones, and everything feels possible, everything in the world.


	37. Erik

Erik awakens to the distant red glow of pain, and to the unexpected softness of a pillow beneath his head. Why unexpected? Why pain?

Memory floods in, and he breathes in sharply in fear and shock, only to open his eyes to see their same cabin, their same bed, and – Charles, lying next to him, one arm in a sling and the other tapping on a laptop keyboard.

He’s alive. _Alive._

It seems almost unbelievable. Once again, he had all but given Charles up for dead; once again Charles has cheated the reaper. Erik’s joy is no dimmer for the repetition.

Charles turns his head, instantly aware of Erik’s waking. “Finally. We were worried. Do you feel all right?”

“Yes,” Erik says. This is not exactly true, given that his ankle seems to be made of ground glass and two of his ribs object to the business of breathing. But he’s still here, and that counts. What counts for more – “You’re safe. Rogue reached you in time.”

“Thanks to you.”

“What happened?”

“Rogue saved the day.” Charles turns the laptop toward him. “Want to see?”

Erik watches the shaky video first in repulsion – the sight of that man holding a gun on Charles sickens him – but then in dawning wonder. The Purifiers asked Charles to repudiate the idea of taking a stand against human attacks – to repudiate _him_ – and Charles refused.

At the price of his own life, Charles would not renounce him.

Then Rogue flies in, and Wolverine stares at the camera like it’s going to stab him, and the rest is irrelevant until Charles begins speaking again. He declares that humanity and mutantkind can have peace or war. He supports Erik. He takes a stand. Their stand.

“What – ” Erik has to swallow hard before he can continue. “What has the response been?”

“Rather good, I think. Not universally positive, of course, but the Purifiers were already beyond the pale. By and large humans were glad to see them set back. They view our counterattack as defensive and justified.” Charles thinks this over. “They’ve stopped feeling sorry for us. Maybe, finally, they see us as equals. We need to codify as much into law now as we can – use this surge of pro-mutant feeling – but I think this is a good place to begin.”

Erik can only nod mutely.

“The big question mark is China.” Charles frowns at the computer as if it had offended him personally. “They’ve made no concessions. On the other hand, they also haven’t announced the destruction of their manufacturing facility or demanded reparations. That’s not nearly enough, but it might be a place to start.”

“A place to start,” Erik repeats, almost on autopilot.

When he made his demands of humanity, he did so assuming that his actions would cost him his place at Charles’ side, with the X-Men. That price was one he would pay for Charles’ life. But it hasn’t happened – Charles is still with him, still alive, still here –

“If we have to demonstrate our power anywhere, it will of course be in China.” Charles runs his good hand over his scalp, the shadow of the way he used to push back his floppy brown hair. “But culturally they’re going to be slower to make any changes, no matter what. I don’t want to jump the gun. And we ought to work on contact with mutants within China to find out how they feel about it; we want to defend them, but honestly we should ask whether they feel they need defense. Their goals may not be ours. What do you think?”

Erik takes Charles’ face in one hand and kisses him, long and deep. Charles startles at first, then relaxes into it. For a long time they are lost in each other, inhaling and exhaling at the same tempo, their unshaven cheeks rough against one another. When at last they pull apart, Erik is breathing so fast his injured ribs burn, and he doesn’t care.

“I thought you would be angry,” he says to Charles, gazing into his blue eyes in wonder. “I thought it would be the end of us.”

“Erik. No.” Charles says this as though it’s unthinkable.

“I threatened them.”

“You demonstrated your power in a way that hurt no one and awed everyone. You threatened those who deserved it and reasoned with those who did not.” Charles looks almost impossibly pleased with himself. “I think I’ve gotten through to you.”

“You’re the one drawing up plans for China. I think I’ve gotten through to you.”

“We have to stand up for what we want. Strategically instead of reactively, with respect for human life, but all the same – yes. It’s time to draw a line in the sand. I told you, I see that now.”

This cannot be possible. Surely. Once again, Erik tries to prove it can’t be true: “Charles – had the Purifiers killed you – I wouldn’t have stopped at reasoning. I would have used all my power – all my strength – ”

“Oh, my friend. Do you honestly think I’ve never asked myself what I’d do if they killed you?” Charles’ blue eyes seem dark, and there is a rare-but-true glimpse of the dangerous man he could be. “You aren’t the only one with limits.”

This is real. This is happening. Does he dare believe it yet?

Quietly, Charles adds, “Haven’t you learned by now, Erik?” His good hand grips Erik’s. “There is no end to us.”

Erik embraces Charles, rolls him over onto the mattress – or, rather, he tries. Both of them wince in pain and stiffen up long before they’ve managed more than huddling next to each other.

“Damn.” Charles breathes out in frustration. “We’re a sorry pair.”

The wonder hasn’t faded for Erik. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t ask for more than this.”

Charles’ face takes on a thoughtful cast. “I could.”

In an instant, the whole world changes. They are no longer old, battered and aching; Erik gazes at his younger body in amazement, because every muscle, sinew and scar is exactly right. Charles remembers him better than he remembers himself. And next to him, Charles is once again the man he first fell in love with: young, strong and possessed of more thick brown hair than he knows what to do with. Instead of the cabin, they’re back in the mansion, piled in Charles’ broad bed and naked between soft white sheets.

They spent many hours here, but Erik knows precisely which day this is. There’s something about the deep gray of the stormy sky outside the windows, something about the very scent of the air that tells him: Charles has brought them back to the very first time they made love.

“It’s exactly right,” Erik says. “Everything. Even the rain.”

“I never forgot one second.” Charles hesitates. “So, you don’t object to my ‘fantasies and illusions’ anymore.”

“Not today. How are you doing this? Has your power already returned?”

“More or less. It’s not as strong as it ought to be, but I can manage this much as long as you work with me. Will you?”

“Gladly.”

Erik reaches toward Charles and brushes his fingertips along Charles’ cheek, watching those blue eyes close slowly in pleasure. He rubs down, up, down again, feeling the scrape of stubble against his knuckles, warm breath against his palm. Charles murmurs, “You did that the first time.”

The frantic eagerness they’d shared as they first kissed, as they groped and panted their way upstairs to Charles room – that had vanished as they reached the bed. In its place had been a kind of fear and awe of the leap they were making. Reverence, even.

“You’re not the only one who can remember,” he answers.

He leans over, curls his fingers to tilt Charles’ face closer. When Erik’s mouth first brushes against his, Charles breathes in sharply, as though the touch were still new. They’re not pretending, though; the mingling of past and present is more real than the psychic illusion.

They can begin again.

Their kisses are as tentative as they were then. Shallow, then deep – as much breathing in each other’s scent as taking in each other’s taste. Erik presses his lips to Charles’ cheekbone, his eyelids, his forehead, his chin, even the end of his nose. Charles lolls back in the bed, the better to let his hands wander along Erik’s body, as if he were still trying to learn his shape, or how to touch him. His fingertips draw paths along Erik’s sides – up his back – across the length of his throat. Charles’ thumbs tease Erik’s earlobes; his lips graze the sensitive skin of his neck.

“You were so gentle,” Erik whispers.

“As were you. For a while – ”

But not for long. They wanted each other too much for that.

Newly urgent, Erik parts his lips and devours Charles’ mouth, hungry and needful. Charles pulls him close, their naked bodies touching (for the first time, for the hundredth) so that Erik can feel him chest to cock to thighs. They get tangled in each other. Burrow down into the soft bed together. Lose their voices and their breath as they keep kissing, incapable of any sound except a gasp, a soft moan, or once, Charles raggedly whispering, “ _Yes_.”

Just hearing Charles say that does something to Erik, turns everything that had been gentle fierce, everything that had been slow desperate. He pushes Charles down, clasping their hands together to pin him against the mattress. When he lowers himself, enclosing Charles within the span of his arms and legs, Charles bucks beneath him, refusing to submit to something he wants as feverishly as Erik does, maybe even more. They rub together, and Erik groans, and then for a while they can only move in unison, friction, heat and wanting, nothing more than that in their heads.

It’s not as if they have to do everything just as they did before – but Erik finds he wants to. He likes the symmetry of their second beginning matching their first.

So he scoots lower on the bed, his hand finding Charles’ cock as his lips kiss their way along the center of Charles’ chest to the taut muscles of his abdomen.

“You were the first man I ever did this for,” Erik reminisces, reveling in the way Charles arches up for him. “I hardly knew how to please you.”

“You were perfect. You are. Erik – ”

Erik opens his mouth wide enough to take Charles inside. Salt is hot against his tongue; the sensation of soft flesh over hard want is as delicious to him now as it was then. He sucks hungrily, eagerly, remembering his old astonishment that another man would taste this good, feel this good, or that he would know just how to use his lips and tongue and breath to bring Charles to the brink. Charles starts swearing and panting, almost out of control, and even turning the world inside out didn’t make Erik feel as powerful as this.

“Stop,” Charles gasps.

 _No,_ Erik thinks, teasing the ridge beneath the head of Charles’ cock with the hard ring of his pursed lips.

“You stopped – before, you stopped – Erik, please, I don’t want it to be over yet – ”

Though this is perhaps where Erik would most like to deviate from what they did before, he does as Charles asks. Regretfully, he lets Charles’ cock slip from his mouth with a soft wet sound that makes Charles shudder. Erik covers Charles with his body again, kissing his mouth once more so that he can taste his own arousal and know what it is Erik loves so much. They start moving together again, unable to resist.

Then he feels Charles’ mind curling around his own, sheltering and soft, silently asking to come inside.

It ought to be absurd: Charles is, of course, thoroughly in psychic contact with him; this entire room, every time their thoughts translate into touch, is the result of Charles’ mind. But it’s not absurd at all. There’s a difference between Charles’ illusions (which are his gift alone, something he projects) and the communion of two minds (which is shared, powered by Charles but the creation of them both.)

And no matter how many times they have shared this communion, Charles always asks. He always has to ask. And Erik’s joy in saying yes is never lessened.

“Everything,” Erik whispers. His forehead is pressed against Charles’ temple; their skin is sweaty, their hair damp, their breaths quick and shallow. “I want everything.”

Another kiss – wet and sloppy – and Charles plunges in.

This never loses its power. Never ceases to astonish, to amaze, to delight. One moment, Erik is himself, aware of his own body and skin – the next, he is himself and Charles together, giving and receiving, within and without. Erik hears himself groaning as he feels Charles’ pleasure at the pressure of his cock against Erik’s abdomen – and Charles twisting in the excitement of Erik’s weight on his body, Erik’s teeth scraping against his throat.

More than that – he is surrounded and submerged in Charles’ love. That love is stronger than any hate Erik has ever encountered. Maybe only now does he understand that it kept him alive.

“And you saved me.” Charles kisses his mouth, his forehead, the skin beneath his Adam’s apple. “You saved me.”

“No end to us,” Erik murmurs against Charles’ chest.

His hands push against Charles’ thighs, angling his legs sharply upward, so that his knees nearly touch his shoulders. Charles cooperates, as eager as Erik is himself. When Erik pushes a finger inside, he finds Charles already prepared, slick and open for him.

“We have certain advantages this way,” Charles says haltingly, between hot kisses on Erik’s throat. “Don’t you think?”

Erik’s only response is to seize Charles at the hips and thrust inside.

Charles cries out – all abandon, no pain – and Erik is wordless in the crushing heat that envelops him. For a long moment, they can only hang there, bodies and souls as one.

It’s Charles who first starts to move, Charles who urges Erik on, Charles who makes their movements faster, harder, more urgent. Erik is atop him but Charles is in control, or at least the one capable of thinking enough to direct them. For Erik, it’s as if he’s in a kind of haze – living in his own past and his future at once, immersed in Charles and yet outside of him. Although Charles isn’t moving Erik’s body as he pushes in, pulls almost all the way out, then plunges in again and harder, Erik doesn’t feel as if he’s the one driving this. The heat between them has its own demands, its own life.

 _Do you know how I love you_? Erik projects what images he can amid the disjointed, delirious mess his mind has become. Charles helping him fold the tinfoil crane – Charles telling the younger, afraid Erik that he knew everything about him, and being so wrong and so right at once – Charles across a chessboard in a clear plastic cell, his only comfort – and Charles, here, now.

Caught up in the waves of it, Charles moans at a higher pitch, and he comes slick and messy between their bellies. The pleasure rushes through Erik just as intensely as Charles, bringing Erik right to the edge. In that last second he lifts himself up to pound harder, to sink as deep as he can into Charles, and then to spill into him, bursting and shuddering and losing himself in the light.

Panting, exhausted, Erik flops down on the bed beside Charles –

\--and it’s their bed in the cabin, so many years later in the here and now. His ankle hurts again; Charles’ shoulder remains swaddled in bandages. They’re still in their pajamas.

“Not even touching,” Erik says, half in amusement, half in wonder.

“We’re touching.” Charles brings his hand to Erik’s cheek, and it’s enough.

They remain like that for a long while as their breathing slows back to normal; Erik uses the silence to get used to the idea that he and Charles are now on the same path. Now and always. It’s the unthinkable. It’s the miracle.

“You’re tired.” Charles’ thumb brushes along his face, tracing the line of an eyebrow. “I overtaxed you.”

“Please, never stop overtaxing me.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Charles smile. The smiles fades, though, too quickly. “Raven left us. She couldn’t accept our decision to retain the Cure.”

“I thought she might.” Erik had hoped to tell her that himself when the time came, but would it have made any difference? Mystique’s greatest virtues are the other sides of her greatest flaws: Her resolve is matched by her stubbornness, her conviction by her unwillingness to see other points of view. He can’t blame her beliefs he held himself until recently, but he’s going to miss her terribly.

Sensing his turn toward melancholy, Charles strokes his cheek again. Erik’s heart lifts again at the sheer wonder of it – Charles caressing him as they lie side by side. “You should get some more sleep, Erik. Hopefully we won’t need your powers again for a long while yet.”

“I need to switch the poles back,” Erik insists. “Not today, perhaps – not up to it, I suspect – but soon.”

“Why? Apparently the aurora borealis is all over the globe at present. Mostly, people love it.”

“Migrating animals. Bees. Geese. Those sorts of creatures. They’ll get lost. I didn’t intend to wreck any ecosystems.”

Charles is quiet for a moment before he says, “You’re worried about the _geese._ ”

“Stop finding it endearing.”

The only response is a small sound that indicates Charles cannot help himself but will at least say nothing more about it.

To change the subject, Erik says, “Once we have a moment, I want you to visit Boston with me. There’s a young man there – Juan Pablo – you should teach him that crafty variation on the Budapest.”

“All right,” Charles says gently. Erik knows he’s being humored, but he’s too sleepy to care.

If he could have told himself, all those years ago, that it would end here, what would his younger self have made of this? Erik is grateful for the years and experience that have taught him the difference between winning and losing, which can be summed up in the touch of Charles’ hand.

When Erik begins to nod off again – he remains Rogue-shadowed and weary, and now the sweet lull that follows sex bears him down – Charles murmurs, “We’ll talk more later.”

“Yes.”

“Figure out what best to do about everything.”

Erik merely nods. His heavy eyelids droop lower.

Charles whispers, “I’m so glad you’re here with me.”

At that, Erik opens his eyes.

Many years ago, the day his mother died, Erik made the first solemn vow of his life: He would destroy Sebastian Shaw. Since then he has had other commitments, equally as important if not more, but has not made another such vow until this moment.

He takes Charles’ hand, squeezes hard, and looks him steadily in the face. “I will never leave you again.”

Charles is so still at first that Erik wonders if he heard, but then he swallows hard and nods. Erik thinks perhaps he can’t speak. But no more words are necessary.

Erik pillows his head next to Charles’, so close their temples touch, and drifts into dreaming. It seems to him that they are sheltered by the glowing canopy of the aurora borealis, flickering blue overhead. He feels the light soft against their skin. He can taste the arc of magnetic energy, the way it flows through the power that illuminates him. He knows every wave, every beam. Erik has found true north.

 

 **THE END**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] The Winter of Banked Fires](https://archiveofourown.org/works/367035) by [crinklysolution](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklysolution/pseuds/crinklysolution), [h78podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/h78podfic/pseuds/h78podfic), [Luzula (Luzula_podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula_podfic/pseuds/Luzula), [Podcath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Podcath/pseuds/Podcath), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




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